Bodiless Within The Bodies DVD Commentary
Yay, so, I'm looking forward to reading commentaries people linked me, and if you have more, link more!
bashipforever asked for commentary on Bodiless Within The Bodies.
For the record, I won't be offended if no one reads this. It's extremely dense, because this is an extremely dense piece. I have about 15 reasons behind every single damn word, and I tried not to talk about all of them but when it gets to be about me and writing, not talking is hard. This piece was ALL about meta, and every bit of it was pushing that agenda. Since I do talk so much and it's so damn long, I just did commentary of one out of the four parts of this fic. Click if you're interested.
Okay, so I somehow found myself in a B/A fic Marathon with no ideas that could be finished by the time of the Marathon. I was thinking a lot at the time about Angel in Hell, because S3 is my favorite season of BtVS, and because B/A set during then is so hurty and good. And I was writing another fic at the time in which Angel goes to a hell dimension, and that piece had a lot to do with the non-linearity of time, and finding yourself again in reality and 3d when you'd been in some kind of warp-o land. So, what I was really thinking of is that Angel's wildness after hell is because he can't ground himself in reality, and that he doesn't find himself until he can ground himself in Buffy, which is what that moment with Angel on his knees in front of Buffy in B&B is all about.
Just that, him finding himself again, didn't seem to be enough for a whole fic, so whenever I don't have enough for a whole idea, I think of mirroring moments. Of course the mirror moment to that meeting is the not-shown moment in S6, which I've always wanted to write anyway. But as I was thinking about that, I also thought of two other strong moments that relate to those, and mirror each other and those in different ways: their mutual reactions after one or the other of them dies, so I had those to work from, too.
Now, when you have mirroring scenes, you set up a dialogue between them: you have to show how much they're the same and how much they're different. And the big difference between Angel seeing Buffy after Hell, and Buffy seeing Angel after Heaven, is they're together in the former and broken up in the latter. Angel gets to ground himself in her, but she doesn't get to ground herself in him; she has to move on. And then I got to thinking that the overall arc of AtS is Angel finding himself, grounding himself. His back story is that he's been so much, done so much, but his present story is that he has to shed all that and become who he really is inside. He grounds himself in Buffy, then he grounds himself in the PTB (both of which I talk about here; I started getting the ideas for that meta when I wrote this fic), and it's not really until NFA that Angel stands up and says, I will not be fucked with, this is who I am.
But the arc of BtVS is the opposite. Buffy's backstory is that she was just completely normal, and her present day story is that she gets more and more identity dumped on her. BtVS is about Buffy trying to reconcile her Buffy self with her Slayer self, and she never really succeeds. For a moment she does when she jumps of Glory's tower--in that moment, it's both her Buffy-love for her sister and her Slayer-duty to the world calling her, but she doesn't get to be at peace with that moment. She has to come back to life and that life is just another burden on top of all these other burdens. To me, BtVS is about Buffy losing herself among all the selves she has to be, which is really really depressing. Whedon tried to fix in it "Chosen", but that didn't really change 7 years of Buffy losing who she used to be.
Anyway, even though I don't always think that's what BtVS is about, it's what I wanted to use here: Angel shedding selves and finding himself, while Buffy gains selves and loses herself. I had just come out of a lit class at the time that was all about textual experimentation, and actually messing with the visual aspect of text, so I thought it would be cool if Buffy gaining was mirrored by the shape of the text getting heavier and heavier, and Angel shedding was mirrored by the text narrowing down. So, I concieved the shape for the fic in my head: 1. (buffy, angel's death) narrow->wide; 2. (angel, angel's resurrection) wide->narrow; 3. (angel, buffy's death) wide->narrow; 4. (buffy, buffy's resurrection) narrow->wide. It's important to me that fics have a shape like that, and mirroring parts. Mathematics, that's the only way I can write short fics.
So, for the first section, about Buffy dealing with Angel's death, I thought a lot about "Anne". And that ep is all about Buffy finding herself, which I considered a lot when I was coming up with the meta above. It's about Chantarelle-Lily-Anne, who hasn't found herself at all, and shifts through identities to exist, and Buffy not wanting to accept her own identity as the Slayer, wanting the change to mourn Angel as a woman. But at the end, Buffy gives her new ID--"Anne"--to Lily, and we assume she's come to terms with herself. But I wanted to focus on the aspect of her losing herself among the selves she has to be, so I was going to do all this stuff about Lily dumping Slayer stuff on Buffy when Buffy doesn't want to be the Slayer any more, but I wanted to work in Buffy's "Anne" nametag. So I started thinking about my experience as a waitress, and there's so much loss of self in that kind of job, that I realized the whole thing would be way too long and crowded if I tried to work in the events of the ep "Anne". So, I decided to stick with waitressing, which is exactly where I started.
I. L.A. Summer, 1998 I really stressed about how these time markers ruined the shape of the fic, but they're necessary to establish the setting.
Syrup.
It’s everywhere.
Ceramic plate. Red vinyl cushion. I did a post about researching for fic here, and that whole post was about this one line. To get ideas for the style of this fic, I was reading several books. Mostly for this part, I was reading Gravity's Rainbow for its handling of simple detail in convoluted ways. I love the unusual vocab in that book, and I noticed that one way it really stood out is the author was always telling us what things were made of, and those raw materials aren't really words in everyday speech. So I stressed for about 4 hours--I kid you not--about what those heavy plates that aren't quite plastic but aren't quite plastic were called, and I couldn't find the name anywhere. I also stressed about vinyl, because at first I couldn't think of the material, and then I wasn't sure that word really popped enough either. At last I got frustrated, and gave up.
Half-eaten pillowy pancake. Glass, child-prints smearing condensation. I got the idea for "child-prints" from a fic author I was reading as well to get inspirations. Uh, not that anyone used that phrase, but iirc the author was Kita and I really enjoyed how she put words together in unexpected ways, but you still knew exactly what she meant, and I kept trying to learn from that technique. Also, this sentence was weird to write, because I felt it had to end in the word "condensation" for the sake of rhyme, but for the life of me, I still can't see what "condensation" rhymes with.
The metal strip around the table-rim. That crack between the strip and the Formica. Spent forever trying to find out what the metal strip was called too, and "Formica". I'm not good at recalling specifics. Also, I hate it when I go to a restaurant and there's food in that crack. It's so gross.
It’s on her neck, and Buffy doesn’t know how it got there. It’s also on the inside of her elbow, and she doesn’t know how it got there either. I worked in a breakfast diner, and this happens. It's grosser than gross. The first thing I thought of when I thought of describing Buffy's job was the fucking syrup, and then I thought that was really great for the theme, here. It's about Buffy piling other selves--stuff sticking to her, not leaving her alone. How you feel at the end of working in a diner that serves pancakes is pretty much that everything you've ever touched and most things you haven't is on you somehow.
Her uniform feels thick with it, and everyone keeps touching her. They grab her hand, “that soda, sweetheart?” They bump her hip, “Hey, watch where you’re goin’, sister!” Leaving out who's saying a line of dialogue--i.e., "someone said", is to me a stylistic trick that is very risky. It's breaking a rule there's rarely a reason to break, and I only really appreciate it when rules are broken for a reason. The reason here is that at first, it's not people sticking to her, it's just syrup, and then people-prints, and what they say. Later, it builds and builds until the people themselves are sticking to her, and that's when the WHO-who-is-saying-the-dialogue gets mentioned--it's not just what they say any more, it's not just their life stories, its their lives, everyone else's lives, and she can't get away from them. The other reason I left out who's speaking the dialogue is that it makes this line shorter, and it had to be short to fit the shape of the fic. Farther down, where more things are sticking to her and the sentences are longer, we get the subject and verb of someone speaking dialogue.
Carnal, meaty, they touch her wrist, “Waffles and syrup and oh-yeah-sausages, to hell with blood pressure, eh?” I was experimenting here with ways to make written dialogue have more of the rhythm of actual speech, thus: "oh-yeah-sausages". Lots of writers use commas or italics for that kind of stuff, and recently it's a trend to leave out spaces, but I find the latter difficult to read (though I use it below), and the former not enough to denote the entire range of inflection.She doesn’t ask them to stop, and at the end of the day they’re’ll still be people-prints all over her.
There’s a Kendra-print on the film of Buffy’s sleep, because Kendra, that bitch, she bled right on Buffy’s brains and smeared it on the celluloid. This part was supposed to be about *all* Buffy's issues after "Becoming Part II", not just killing Angel, because again, Angel gets to be all about Buffy in part ii, but in this fic, Buffy never gets to be all about Angel. Again, it got too long for me to dump her feeling about her family and friends, school and arrest, on top of Buffy's waitress and Angel issues, but it was important for me to mention Kendra. Few people ever seem to write about what a truly great impact Kendra's death must've had on Buffy. It all gets lost in Angel-drama. But dude, Kendra was Buffy's last hope, the last hope to find herself, a hope Buffy doesn't get again until "Chosen". Sure, Faith comes along so Buffy's less alone, but Faith's other issues aside, Buffy's been through Kendra's death, and once Buffy has to go through that, she realizes she's still alone in this. The others are going to rise and fall, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have to keep on truckin' it til she dies. And besides the death of a friend, that realization must've weighed really heavy on Buffy. Get it, Buffy, weight, piling on of issues, selves? Now Buffy’s dreams feel straight out of the forties, monochromatic, but in the sepia tint of dried blood and that-that damn maple syrup . . . At first, there was a Kendra print on Buffy's brain, but that sounds . . . weird. So I tried to think about a physical representation of something stuck in your brain, and tried to bring the syrup and people-prints theme into it too, and came up with film. It took me a long time to find the word "sepia". I think I learned it by luck, reading someone else's fic.
Frame after frame flickers slower and slower on the screen of Buffy’s brain, Kendra after Kendra, slowing so drastically Buffy wonders whether there was ever one Kendra at all. Hookay, this is . . . the subject of my paper for my lit class I was only about 5 months out of when I wrote this fic. At the same time I took that class I was taking a film class. Anyway, the paper was about how I exist singlely for me, but how everyone else is actually only in existence when I see them, and because I don't continually see them, they are a new version of themselves every time, something entirely different. Which is mirrored by the way film works: it looks like Neo is moving fluidly to kick Mr. Smith's ass, but actually what you're seeing is a million Neos, each one a slightly different version from the last. So, that brings up a whole lot of questions about identity, and about continuity of self, which is exactly what I was writing this fic about: does Buffy really feel like the same person after she gets Called? After she kills Angel? After she comes back from Heaven? The meta I did for this fic had a lot to do with the place I was in when I was writing that paper--how maybe Buffy isn't so much this one single entity as a myriad of possibilities under the heading Buffy. That lack of self is very Eastern to me, which I realized as I did Angel's part--which is interesting, because Angel goes to Tibet after Buffy's death, but what he does is find himself, while Buffy stays West and loses herself.The dream forties phonograph announces, “Of course der iz more dan one Kendra; if der waz only one-well then, what has happened to my accent? This idea, that dream-Kendra suddenly becomes all Slayers mid-sentence, is intensely connected to the loss-of-self theme, but it came about because I suck at writing accents.There are hundreds of us, thousands, we die and we wake, die and wake, come on now Buffy-wake up.”
“Wake the fuck up, Anne, you airhead, I could have you replaced like that, what, you think you’re the only gal in here, you’re no different from the rest of them by Christ . . .” So here's my film class coming into play again--the transition from the previous paragraph to this one being sound editing: sound from the previous scene sliding into sound from the next scene. They do that in movies certainly, and in plays, but not enough in fiction, so I tried it out. Sighing, Buffy pins on her name and ties on her apron, which after it’s washed still feels like dollar bills on her body, smooth, worn, handled, because people have been in this before, they’ve been in her body. The "dollar bills on her body" was a metaphor I thought of while waitressing. Touching that much money is so gross, and the way your uniform feels really is worn no matter how you starch it, and the similarity between the money and the clothes is just so ew.They’ve been a different person at the time, but it’s the same Slayer, and they just pin on their different names, an Anne or a Susan or a Hai-Chi Hai-Chi is my BFF's name. I wanted something unusual on the fly., but really, when was the last time you ordered a cheeseburger from someone-with-a- . . . face it buster, someonewithanameofherown? Okay, and here's another loss-of-identity bit about being a waitress. No one gives a fuck who you are, you're just the meal machine.
“My grandfather,” eggs-and-orange-juice says Several people commented on the calling-people-by-their-orders. It's not something I actually did as a waitress. I think I stole it from a book or tv show, but I've heard it enough that I didn't really feel like I was *stealing*., “my grandfather’s name is Ed, with a brother named Fred, and he’s an attorney, and a legislator, and a race car driver, and a mechanic my step-grandfather's name is Fred, he has a brother named Ed, and Fred was all these things except the mechanic. I was writing this on a deadline, so I just kept trying to think of RL situations that to me were all about having too many lives to live., and some people are three people, know what I mean?” “Say, what’s your-oh, I see, Anne-why so glum, chum, don’t you know tomorrow is another day; Greta Garbo said that once, didn’t she, or it was . . . I got it, it was you, little orphan . . . wait, no, Annie was . . . Annie was bet your bot-tom dol-lar that to-morrow . . .” So, the person getting confused about who's who is another case of identity-piling on identity and loss of self, but the "Greta Garbo" thing was meant to be a veiled reference which I botched. I was actually thinking of Rita Hayworth, and the quote, "Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me," which is obviously a case of having identity thrust upon you, and getting lost in it. But I think I thought of Garbo because of her famous quote: "I vont to be alone!", which also applies to Buffy at this point of her life, in some ways.“So their mom died,” Belgian-waffles-the-price-is-too-high is saying, thick voiced and syrupy sweet, “and the father was heaven knows where, so we had to bring the kids home, you know, and so mom’s like their mom too now, and their aunt, and I’m their . . . well, it’s complicated . . .” And the stories stick, like something she can’t forget, like the dead open eyes of Teresa, the bruised pale form of Willow, like Kendra and Giles and Xander and Mother, oh Mother, and even Cordelia, and Miss Calendar, oh God, and Angel, always Angel, Again, I was going to talk about each of Buffy's burdens in this section, but it got to be way too long. When I thought about it though, them coming in a rush like this really worked for what I was trying to do. I don't like that she called her mom "Mother", though. and who was she again, under all this-under all these bodies? When I started metating for this piece, I had been paralleling Buffy's issues piling up to a piling on of selves, but when I wrote about Kendra's death, I thought about Buffy's issues in terms of her responsibilities, and she feels responsible for everyone's safety, and Angelus caused so many people's deaths or injuries, and Buffy feels like it's all her fault, and that piles on her too. So, I didn't start out the piece with the intention that Buffy's "selves" would be paralleled by a physcial body count, and that her "losing herself" would parallel actually getting buried, but once I saw that metaphor, I realized it was exactly what I wanted to say. Buffy's greatest fear, after all (from "Nightmares") is getting buried. This piece is about burial and resurrection, and BtVS is, too.
“Buffy” clawed out of Angel is as close as vocal chords get to coming, I don't like this line; I think it's kind of gross. But I wanted Angel to say her name, to show that that--her, herself, her very identity--IS his actual orgasm. Again, Buffy is how Angel defines himself at this point in canon. his throat pulsing and aroused with her name, yeah oh yeah The italicization here is kind of experimental, it's first person in a third person piece. I'd seen that done fairly often, but at the time, I'd never really done it myself in a fic.she remembers that, the groan of tepid air inside her mouth, the rush between her legs, the arched tightening, thrusting, wet warm whispered we’re the only people in the world. Which is of course a whisper that's in direct opposition to what's going on in the now: before Buffy could just be herself, with him. Now she has all this other stuff piled on top. Also, I wanted to do a really long involved sex scene here, but all my porn gets reduced to like, an honorable mention by the time I get to it. Again, rushing by it suited the piece more, because the point is, all this stuff piled on Buffy gets to be so much she can't experience it singley for herself; it gets thrust upon her and she gets lost in it. It doesn’t last, though; tomorrow he’s another person and she’s another year older literally,'cause it was her birthday. :o(; “it was a good time, but it doesn’t mean we have to make it a big deal,” and there in canon Angelus stated exactly what I was doing with this piece here: everything getting dumped on Buffy so hard she never got to make big deals of things that mattered to herand then her friends’ deaths pile on her like dirt on a grave, until she’s wondering whether Kendra died, or whether it was actually her, something I didn't talk about, 'cause I guess it's kind of obvious, is how identity-less being a Slayer is. They're all different versions of one girl under the heading "Slayer", just like how now Buffy is feeling like a million different people under a heading "Buffy", and she's trying to show that she's different, exert some sense of self, by being "Anne", but of course that doesn't work. because what’s one Slayer or the next? They all do their job, and it ain’t waitin’ tables, honey, it’s putting friends in danger and killing lovers, yeah oh yeah she remembers that, I used the repetition of the "oh yeah" line to parallel her killing Angel to Angel fucking her. Even though lots of people hate how Buffy having sex turned into a Big Bad Thing, I love how there's that thrust-for-thrust action going in the arc between sex and hell. and torturing men with silver hair and father-crinkles round his eyes "father-crinkles" comes from the same mind-place as "child-prints". And, in case it's not clear, I'm talking about Giles here., she remembers that, but the funny thing is she can’t remember Hemery, her first kiss, her first movie, her first moment on the ice,Chrislee had to correct my spelling of Hemery. I think Buffy's ice skating is an important personal detail about Buffy, and I wish more fics banked on it. her first self, because that self doesn’t seem to matter, so it must’ve been Buffy who died, because hey look, I’m in this grave, and there’s so much . . . what the . . . so much maple syrup . . . It was important to me that both Buffy sections end with trailing punctuation. Angel is finding himself, coming to concrete conclusions in the piece, narrowing down. Buffy keeps piling more and more, and it will keep going, there's not a single definite one word ending.
bashipforever asked for commentary on Bodiless Within The Bodies.
For the record, I won't be offended if no one reads this. It's extremely dense, because this is an extremely dense piece. I have about 15 reasons behind every single damn word, and I tried not to talk about all of them but when it gets to be about me and writing, not talking is hard. This piece was ALL about meta, and every bit of it was pushing that agenda. Since I do talk so much and it's so damn long, I just did commentary of one out of the four parts of this fic. Click if you're interested.
Okay, so I somehow found myself in a B/A fic Marathon with no ideas that could be finished by the time of the Marathon. I was thinking a lot at the time about Angel in Hell, because S3 is my favorite season of BtVS, and because B/A set during then is so hurty and good. And I was writing another fic at the time in which Angel goes to a hell dimension, and that piece had a lot to do with the non-linearity of time, and finding yourself again in reality and 3d when you'd been in some kind of warp-o land. So, what I was really thinking of is that Angel's wildness after hell is because he can't ground himself in reality, and that he doesn't find himself until he can ground himself in Buffy, which is what that moment with Angel on his knees in front of Buffy in B&B is all about.
Just that, him finding himself again, didn't seem to be enough for a whole fic, so whenever I don't have enough for a whole idea, I think of mirroring moments. Of course the mirror moment to that meeting is the not-shown moment in S6, which I've always wanted to write anyway. But as I was thinking about that, I also thought of two other strong moments that relate to those, and mirror each other and those in different ways: their mutual reactions after one or the other of them dies, so I had those to work from, too.
Now, when you have mirroring scenes, you set up a dialogue between them: you have to show how much they're the same and how much they're different. And the big difference between Angel seeing Buffy after Hell, and Buffy seeing Angel after Heaven, is they're together in the former and broken up in the latter. Angel gets to ground himself in her, but she doesn't get to ground herself in him; she has to move on. And then I got to thinking that the overall arc of AtS is Angel finding himself, grounding himself. His back story is that he's been so much, done so much, but his present story is that he has to shed all that and become who he really is inside. He grounds himself in Buffy, then he grounds himself in the PTB (both of which I talk about here; I started getting the ideas for that meta when I wrote this fic), and it's not really until NFA that Angel stands up and says, I will not be fucked with, this is who I am.
But the arc of BtVS is the opposite. Buffy's backstory is that she was just completely normal, and her present day story is that she gets more and more identity dumped on her. BtVS is about Buffy trying to reconcile her Buffy self with her Slayer self, and she never really succeeds. For a moment she does when she jumps of Glory's tower--in that moment, it's both her Buffy-love for her sister and her Slayer-duty to the world calling her, but she doesn't get to be at peace with that moment. She has to come back to life and that life is just another burden on top of all these other burdens. To me, BtVS is about Buffy losing herself among all the selves she has to be, which is really really depressing. Whedon tried to fix in it "Chosen", but that didn't really change 7 years of Buffy losing who she used to be.
Anyway, even though I don't always think that's what BtVS is about, it's what I wanted to use here: Angel shedding selves and finding himself, while Buffy gains selves and loses herself. I had just come out of a lit class at the time that was all about textual experimentation, and actually messing with the visual aspect of text, so I thought it would be cool if Buffy gaining was mirrored by the shape of the text getting heavier and heavier, and Angel shedding was mirrored by the text narrowing down. So, I concieved the shape for the fic in my head: 1. (buffy, angel's death) narrow->wide; 2. (angel, angel's resurrection) wide->narrow; 3. (angel, buffy's death) wide->narrow; 4. (buffy, buffy's resurrection) narrow->wide. It's important to me that fics have a shape like that, and mirroring parts. Mathematics, that's the only way I can write short fics.
So, for the first section, about Buffy dealing with Angel's death, I thought a lot about "Anne". And that ep is all about Buffy finding herself, which I considered a lot when I was coming up with the meta above. It's about Chantarelle-Lily-Anne, who hasn't found herself at all, and shifts through identities to exist, and Buffy not wanting to accept her own identity as the Slayer, wanting the change to mourn Angel as a woman. But at the end, Buffy gives her new ID--"Anne"--to Lily, and we assume she's come to terms with herself. But I wanted to focus on the aspect of her losing herself among the selves she has to be, so I was going to do all this stuff about Lily dumping Slayer stuff on Buffy when Buffy doesn't want to be the Slayer any more, but I wanted to work in Buffy's "Anne" nametag. So I started thinking about my experience as a waitress, and there's so much loss of self in that kind of job, that I realized the whole thing would be way too long and crowded if I tried to work in the events of the ep "Anne". So, I decided to stick with waitressing, which is exactly where I started.
I. L.A. Summer, 1998 I really stressed about how these time markers ruined the shape of the fic, but they're necessary to establish the setting.
Syrup.
It’s everywhere.
Ceramic plate. Red vinyl cushion. I did a post about researching for fic here, and that whole post was about this one line. To get ideas for the style of this fic, I was reading several books. Mostly for this part, I was reading Gravity's Rainbow for its handling of simple detail in convoluted ways. I love the unusual vocab in that book, and I noticed that one way it really stood out is the author was always telling us what things were made of, and those raw materials aren't really words in everyday speech. So I stressed for about 4 hours--I kid you not--about what those heavy plates that aren't quite plastic but aren't quite plastic were called, and I couldn't find the name anywhere. I also stressed about vinyl, because at first I couldn't think of the material, and then I wasn't sure that word really popped enough either. At last I got frustrated, and gave up.
Half-eaten pillowy pancake. Glass, child-prints smearing condensation. I got the idea for "child-prints" from a fic author I was reading as well to get inspirations. Uh, not that anyone used that phrase, but iirc the author was Kita and I really enjoyed how she put words together in unexpected ways, but you still knew exactly what she meant, and I kept trying to learn from that technique. Also, this sentence was weird to write, because I felt it had to end in the word "condensation" for the sake of rhyme, but for the life of me, I still can't see what "condensation" rhymes with.
The metal strip around the table-rim. That crack between the strip and the Formica. Spent forever trying to find out what the metal strip was called too, and "Formica". I'm not good at recalling specifics. Also, I hate it when I go to a restaurant and there's food in that crack. It's so gross.
It’s on her neck, and Buffy doesn’t know how it got there. It’s also on the inside of her elbow, and she doesn’t know how it got there either. I worked in a breakfast diner, and this happens. It's grosser than gross. The first thing I thought of when I thought of describing Buffy's job was the fucking syrup, and then I thought that was really great for the theme, here. It's about Buffy piling other selves--stuff sticking to her, not leaving her alone. How you feel at the end of working in a diner that serves pancakes is pretty much that everything you've ever touched and most things you haven't is on you somehow.
Her uniform feels thick with it, and everyone keeps touching her. They grab her hand, “that soda, sweetheart?” They bump her hip, “Hey, watch where you’re goin’, sister!” Leaving out who's saying a line of dialogue--i.e., "someone said", is to me a stylistic trick that is very risky. It's breaking a rule there's rarely a reason to break, and I only really appreciate it when rules are broken for a reason. The reason here is that at first, it's not people sticking to her, it's just syrup, and then people-prints, and what they say. Later, it builds and builds until the people themselves are sticking to her, and that's when the WHO-who-is-saying-the-dialogue gets mentioned--it's not just what they say any more, it's not just their life stories, its their lives, everyone else's lives, and she can't get away from them. The other reason I left out who's speaking the dialogue is that it makes this line shorter, and it had to be short to fit the shape of the fic. Farther down, where more things are sticking to her and the sentences are longer, we get the subject and verb of someone speaking dialogue.
Carnal, meaty, they touch her wrist, “Waffles and syrup and oh-yeah-sausages, to hell with blood pressure, eh?” I was experimenting here with ways to make written dialogue have more of the rhythm of actual speech, thus: "oh-yeah-sausages". Lots of writers use commas or italics for that kind of stuff, and recently it's a trend to leave out spaces, but I find the latter difficult to read (though I use it below), and the former not enough to denote the entire range of inflection.She doesn’t ask them to stop, and at the end of the day they’re’ll still be people-prints all over her.
There’s a Kendra-print on the film of Buffy’s sleep, because Kendra, that bitch, she bled right on Buffy’s brains and smeared it on the celluloid. This part was supposed to be about *all* Buffy's issues after "Becoming Part II", not just killing Angel, because again, Angel gets to be all about Buffy in part ii, but in this fic, Buffy never gets to be all about Angel. Again, it got too long for me to dump her feeling about her family and friends, school and arrest, on top of Buffy's waitress and Angel issues, but it was important for me to mention Kendra. Few people ever seem to write about what a truly great impact Kendra's death must've had on Buffy. It all gets lost in Angel-drama. But dude, Kendra was Buffy's last hope, the last hope to find herself, a hope Buffy doesn't get again until "Chosen". Sure, Faith comes along so Buffy's less alone, but Faith's other issues aside, Buffy's been through Kendra's death, and once Buffy has to go through that, she realizes she's still alone in this. The others are going to rise and fall, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have to keep on truckin' it til she dies. And besides the death of a friend, that realization must've weighed really heavy on Buffy. Get it, Buffy, weight, piling on of issues, selves? Now Buffy’s dreams feel straight out of the forties, monochromatic, but in the sepia tint of dried blood and that-that damn maple syrup . . . At first, there was a Kendra print on Buffy's brain, but that sounds . . . weird. So I tried to think about a physical representation of something stuck in your brain, and tried to bring the syrup and people-prints theme into it too, and came up with film. It took me a long time to find the word "sepia". I think I learned it by luck, reading someone else's fic.
Frame after frame flickers slower and slower on the screen of Buffy’s brain, Kendra after Kendra, slowing so drastically Buffy wonders whether there was ever one Kendra at all. Hookay, this is . . . the subject of my paper for my lit class I was only about 5 months out of when I wrote this fic. At the same time I took that class I was taking a film class. Anyway, the paper was about how I exist singlely for me, but how everyone else is actually only in existence when I see them, and because I don't continually see them, they are a new version of themselves every time, something entirely different. Which is mirrored by the way film works: it looks like Neo is moving fluidly to kick Mr. Smith's ass, but actually what you're seeing is a million Neos, each one a slightly different version from the last. So, that brings up a whole lot of questions about identity, and about continuity of self, which is exactly what I was writing this fic about: does Buffy really feel like the same person after she gets Called? After she kills Angel? After she comes back from Heaven? The meta I did for this fic had a lot to do with the place I was in when I was writing that paper--how maybe Buffy isn't so much this one single entity as a myriad of possibilities under the heading Buffy. That lack of self is very Eastern to me, which I realized as I did Angel's part--which is interesting, because Angel goes to Tibet after Buffy's death, but what he does is find himself, while Buffy stays West and loses herself.The dream forties phonograph announces, “Of course der iz more dan one Kendra; if der waz only one-well then, what has happened to my accent? This idea, that dream-Kendra suddenly becomes all Slayers mid-sentence, is intensely connected to the loss-of-self theme, but it came about because I suck at writing accents.There are hundreds of us, thousands, we die and we wake, die and wake, come on now Buffy-wake up.”
“Wake the fuck up, Anne, you airhead, I could have you replaced like that, what, you think you’re the only gal in here, you’re no different from the rest of them by Christ . . .” So here's my film class coming into play again--the transition from the previous paragraph to this one being sound editing: sound from the previous scene sliding into sound from the next scene. They do that in movies certainly, and in plays, but not enough in fiction, so I tried it out. Sighing, Buffy pins on her name and ties on her apron, which after it’s washed still feels like dollar bills on her body, smooth, worn, handled, because people have been in this before, they’ve been in her body. The "dollar bills on her body" was a metaphor I thought of while waitressing. Touching that much money is so gross, and the way your uniform feels really is worn no matter how you starch it, and the similarity between the money and the clothes is just so ew.They’ve been a different person at the time, but it’s the same Slayer, and they just pin on their different names, an Anne or a Susan or a Hai-Chi Hai-Chi is my BFF's name. I wanted something unusual on the fly., but really, when was the last time you ordered a cheeseburger from someone-with-a- . . . face it buster, someonewithanameofherown? Okay, and here's another loss-of-identity bit about being a waitress. No one gives a fuck who you are, you're just the meal machine.
“My grandfather,” eggs-and-orange-juice says Several people commented on the calling-people-by-their-orders. It's not something I actually did as a waitress. I think I stole it from a book or tv show, but I've heard it enough that I didn't really feel like I was *stealing*., “my grandfather’s name is Ed, with a brother named Fred, and he’s an attorney, and a legislator, and a race car driver, and a mechanic my step-grandfather's name is Fred, he has a brother named Ed, and Fred was all these things except the mechanic. I was writing this on a deadline, so I just kept trying to think of RL situations that to me were all about having too many lives to live., and some people are three people, know what I mean?” “Say, what’s your-oh, I see, Anne-why so glum, chum, don’t you know tomorrow is another day; Greta Garbo said that once, didn’t she, or it was . . . I got it, it was you, little orphan . . . wait, no, Annie was . . . Annie was bet your bot-tom dol-lar that to-morrow . . .” So, the person getting confused about who's who is another case of identity-piling on identity and loss of self, but the "Greta Garbo" thing was meant to be a veiled reference which I botched. I was actually thinking of Rita Hayworth, and the quote, "Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me," which is obviously a case of having identity thrust upon you, and getting lost in it. But I think I thought of Garbo because of her famous quote: "I vont to be alone!", which also applies to Buffy at this point of her life, in some ways.“So their mom died,” Belgian-waffles-the-price-is-too-high is saying, thick voiced and syrupy sweet, “and the father was heaven knows where, so we had to bring the kids home, you know, and so mom’s like their mom too now, and their aunt, and I’m their . . . well, it’s complicated . . .” And the stories stick, like something she can’t forget, like the dead open eyes of Teresa, the bruised pale form of Willow, like Kendra and Giles and Xander and Mother, oh Mother, and even Cordelia, and Miss Calendar, oh God, and Angel, always Angel, Again, I was going to talk about each of Buffy's burdens in this section, but it got to be way too long. When I thought about it though, them coming in a rush like this really worked for what I was trying to do. I don't like that she called her mom "Mother", though. and who was she again, under all this-under all these bodies? When I started metating for this piece, I had been paralleling Buffy's issues piling up to a piling on of selves, but when I wrote about Kendra's death, I thought about Buffy's issues in terms of her responsibilities, and she feels responsible for everyone's safety, and Angelus caused so many people's deaths or injuries, and Buffy feels like it's all her fault, and that piles on her too. So, I didn't start out the piece with the intention that Buffy's "selves" would be paralleled by a physcial body count, and that her "losing herself" would parallel actually getting buried, but once I saw that metaphor, I realized it was exactly what I wanted to say. Buffy's greatest fear, after all (from "Nightmares") is getting buried. This piece is about burial and resurrection, and BtVS is, too.
“Buffy” clawed out of Angel is as close as vocal chords get to coming, I don't like this line; I think it's kind of gross. But I wanted Angel to say her name, to show that that--her, herself, her very identity--IS his actual orgasm. Again, Buffy is how Angel defines himself at this point in canon. his throat pulsing and aroused with her name, yeah oh yeah The italicization here is kind of experimental, it's first person in a third person piece. I'd seen that done fairly often, but at the time, I'd never really done it myself in a fic.she remembers that, the groan of tepid air inside her mouth, the rush between her legs, the arched tightening, thrusting, wet warm whispered we’re the only people in the world. Which is of course a whisper that's in direct opposition to what's going on in the now: before Buffy could just be herself, with him. Now she has all this other stuff piled on top. Also, I wanted to do a really long involved sex scene here, but all my porn gets reduced to like, an honorable mention by the time I get to it. Again, rushing by it suited the piece more, because the point is, all this stuff piled on Buffy gets to be so much she can't experience it singley for herself; it gets thrust upon her and she gets lost in it. It doesn’t last, though; tomorrow he’s another person and she’s another year older literally,'cause it was her birthday. :o(; “it was a good time, but it doesn’t mean we have to make it a big deal,” and there in canon Angelus stated exactly what I was doing with this piece here: everything getting dumped on Buffy so hard she never got to make big deals of things that mattered to herand then her friends’ deaths pile on her like dirt on a grave, until she’s wondering whether Kendra died, or whether it was actually her, something I didn't talk about, 'cause I guess it's kind of obvious, is how identity-less being a Slayer is. They're all different versions of one girl under the heading "Slayer", just like how now Buffy is feeling like a million different people under a heading "Buffy", and she's trying to show that she's different, exert some sense of self, by being "Anne", but of course that doesn't work. because what’s one Slayer or the next? They all do their job, and it ain’t waitin’ tables, honey, it’s putting friends in danger and killing lovers, yeah oh yeah she remembers that, I used the repetition of the "oh yeah" line to parallel her killing Angel to Angel fucking her. Even though lots of people hate how Buffy having sex turned into a Big Bad Thing, I love how there's that thrust-for-thrust action going in the arc between sex and hell. and torturing men with silver hair and father-crinkles round his eyes "father-crinkles" comes from the same mind-place as "child-prints". And, in case it's not clear, I'm talking about Giles here., she remembers that, but the funny thing is she can’t remember Hemery, her first kiss, her first movie, her first moment on the ice,Chrislee had to correct my spelling of Hemery. I think Buffy's ice skating is an important personal detail about Buffy, and I wish more fics banked on it. her first self, because that self doesn’t seem to matter, so it must’ve been Buffy who died, because hey look, I’m in this grave, and there’s so much . . . what the . . . so much maple syrup . . . It was important to me that both Buffy sections end with trailing punctuation. Angel is finding himself, coming to concrete conclusions in the piece, narrowing down. Buffy keeps piling more and more, and it will keep going, there's not a single definite one word ending.