Water Hold Me Down: conjecture on an abandoned WIP
I just got to the "end" of Water Hold Me Down. Again. I don't remember reading it the first time but there I am in the comments.
It's decades gone. It won't be finished. liz_marcs has gone on. But I have thoughts. Many may be obvious.
First, the title is a definite reference to the Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime". I may have understood previously that this was true, that the animating idea comes from the first verse: And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” That the "perfect world" where Xander's life where he's married to the love of his life, has an adorable child, is very successful and well-liked within his community and lives the suburban dream is ultimately the "darkest timeline" (to steal from Community) is wonderful ironic.
And there are two answers to the "How did I get here?" question. In "Cleveland", a number of "victims" of Anya cast magic to send Xander away until the blood of Anya can be used to send him back.
In "Orange County" (I can't remember/find the town name, but I recall it translates to "City of Women" or something, which is so appropriate for a Xander-centric fic), Xander is hated by the important remaining Forces of Good people because he didn't come back for "Chosen", because Anya was pregnant with Haley. "Chosen" and S7 became a bloodbath because Buffy and Dawn (and Xander?) not there. Buffy and Dawn were not there because Willow slaughtered them and exists locked in magic by the Devon Coven because Xander wasn't there to say "You want to kill everyone? I'm first in line" at Kingman's Bluff. He wasn't there because he was married, because he sucked it up after the vision. Maybe because he was alienated enough from Buffy and Willow that even after the vision, he clung to Anya because there was nothing else in his life. That alienation was enough that Riley was the Animus in S4 and died in the RV in S5. And it ultimately ties to a one-car accident where Tony and Jessica, his parents, die. Xander is sure that this was a murder, that it's a Sunnydale thing, but Giles believes it just happened. Xander moves in with him for a month as he starts to get his life together, but that disagreement, and the social bonds that break, end up with Anya guiding Xander into the suburban dream while everyone else falls and fails into the barely-functional future we see.
So it rests on the car crash.
And we see an Anya so intent on her perfect Norman Rockwell home. (like Debbie Rae, and if you know, you know.) So intent that she hits her daughter with a stupid marble rolling pin. This is 100% conjecture, but the more I think of it, and I think the valkyrie!Anya vs OC Anya argument and the evil twin back it up, but Anya arranged the car crash and Yoko Factored Xander out of the Core Four, which caused madness and pain and death on a planet-wide scale, which is fine, because Anya has the white picket fence and the stupid marble rolling pin.
I think the spell gets Anya's blood. Just not from where they wanted it from.
I'll point out also that, while we're hitting the high points of Xander's love life, we hardly hear about Cordy. Could be something, could be nothing. In canon, Cordy is in a coma and sliding away to becoming a Power That Be when Xander gets called, and neither called each other on screen in four years. If we have Anya kill Cordy between "Doppelgängland" and "City of", as a hedge against Xander's wandering eye, perhaps at a point where bodies would be piling up (Graduation?), you get an Anya whose bad acts come closer to justifying her death to get Cleveland Xander home. Of course, who is going to be mad enough to do that? OC Xander, and suddenly we get OC Xander in Cleveland, because the Xanders are the same as far as magic is concerned.
The dangling of the Cordylessness of the OC 'verse might be the reason for the double-wide "final" episode could be to do that, or it could be that Liz wrote herself into a corner. We have Team Cleveland living on nervous energy but thinking they're clocking time until it all finished. Anti-Anya is mostly comic relief. They're on stand-by until an event they can know about and react to occurs. New Slayer Haley is asleep and trying to process her friends being dead. (C!Xander told her that her friends are dead for the same reasons he told Buffy Willow said to kick his ass, because there's a kill-you outcome and there's everything else, and his not-daughter Daugherty Haley hating him forever is far better than her being dead.) Anya is unconscious. C!Xander is waking up and about to excuse himself into a mental hospital. Spooky Willow, this nightmare Gollum version of her, is waiting. She needs OC!Xander and is watching.
There are exactly three moving parts on the board right now. OC!Xander, who hates everyone in his house but Haley right now. Rupert, whose situation is not as dire as it was in DGL when he crushed the power center and undemoned Anyanka, but is close to any other world has to be better. Faith, older and wiser and wanting nothing more right now than to drink herself blotto so she can hold off on seeing tortured dead tweens in her dreams forever and ever.
This makes the ending on exposition the problem. The things they take as obvious are things that they assume are true across both universes but aren't. Not that C!Xander would be much more open, but if he could say "No. No, they're alive. They're in Ventura. Dad's always hitting me up for money. It's embarrassing.", A everybody involved could search back for the breaking point.
My conjecture is that the end, if the characters would allow it, would be that OC!Xander kills Anya. We know he's killed before. This triggers him to go to Cleveland, much to everyone's chagrin.
Except for Spooky Willow, it isn't chagrin. It's anger and pain and sadness and NO! THIS! WILL! NOT! HAPPEN! The walls of her castle prison fall down. Her tendrils, the ones causing changes that Rupert ascribed to C!Xander, cause things to break and people to die. Magic users across the world feel her pain and drive. She opens the bullet hole between worlds to drag her Xander back. If she killed Dawn, she has that nifty green energy.
And the two sides, mostly Willow and Lady Haversham, try to keep the worlds from ending. I mean, witches always trump slayers. It has always been so. But between the madness and the key energy and the decade of collecting power, it really is no match.
Until OC!Xander, Spooky's Xander, walks forward and offers his box. He'll go back, he'll be with her, but Cleveland must survive. The hole gets fixed. C!Xander says no, but it has to be this way. Whether it's spookily ever after, or if it's Xander kills Willow and then himself, it happens. I think that Rupert and OC!Faith go back too. Their darkest timeline is darker still. They might die. I could almost think that OC!Faith is relieved to finally die. I don't want that, but maybe.
But if Gollum!Willow gets her Prescious, she has to fall into the lava. That's the rules.
But, since her friends are dead, her mother is dead, her grandparents are dead and, between the darkness of various choices, her dad is no longer her dad (or is dead), Haley is either taken in by Rupert and/or Faith, or crosses back and lives in the Cleveland Mother House.
If Rupert, he's allowing himself to be the father figure he never would with Xander. This might start to change the world and the Council.
If Faith, she becomes a Mom to Haley. She has something to live for, but just exist for. She has something besides more of the same to look forward to. That could be heartbreaking.
If the Cleveland Team... I'm liking it less and less. Yes, we lose her as a character (like there's more stories there) but she's a tween in a house of argumentative teenage girls, with Buffy and Dawn and Xander and Willow and Faith as older-sibling-aged parent figures. And Giles, who is trying to manage the world. I think it could be intended as good, but she'd be lost. C!Xander loves her like the daughter he never had with the woman he lost twice. I said that Eyeless-verse was fundamentally A/X where Anya isn't there. I think Water Hold Me Down is the same. But I'm not sure he could do that, or be that. Be the watcher/father that Haley needs after being orphaned by OC!Anya and Xander.
I just had a realization. Her grandparents exist. I had a thought that he could let her live with Tony and Jessica. Then I had a violent backlash against that. Then, real Uncle Rory is likely still alive, and even more no.
I'm suddenly made sad by the lack of family for a fictional character who has a minor role in the narrative.
(Aside: I believe we mostly heard two-sided fights from Xander POV, and it wasn't like we ever heard him saying anything good about one parent and bad about another. But in Hell's Bells, we see a drunk and abusive Tony but we don't see Jessica fight back. It fits with the "Xander will be abusive" thing of the episode, but it paints a different picture then we've seen.)
And knowing Liz, there is no way any of this could be resolved in less than 20 chapters.
And I'm very sad I'll never read it.
It's decades gone. It won't be finished. liz_marcs has gone on. But I have thoughts. Many may be obvious.
First, the title is a definite reference to the Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime". I may have understood previously that this was true, that the animating idea comes from the first verse: And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” That the "perfect world" where Xander's life where he's married to the love of his life, has an adorable child, is very successful and well-liked within his community and lives the suburban dream is ultimately the "darkest timeline" (to steal from Community) is wonderful ironic.
And there are two answers to the "How did I get here?" question. In "Cleveland", a number of "victims" of Anya cast magic to send Xander away until the blood of Anya can be used to send him back.
In "Orange County" (I can't remember/find the town name, but I recall it translates to "City of Women" or something, which is so appropriate for a Xander-centric fic), Xander is hated by the important remaining Forces of Good people because he didn't come back for "Chosen", because Anya was pregnant with Haley. "Chosen" and S7 became a bloodbath because Buffy and Dawn (and Xander?) not there. Buffy and Dawn were not there because Willow slaughtered them and exists locked in magic by the Devon Coven because Xander wasn't there to say "You want to kill everyone? I'm first in line" at Kingman's Bluff. He wasn't there because he was married, because he sucked it up after the vision. Maybe because he was alienated enough from Buffy and Willow that even after the vision, he clung to Anya because there was nothing else in his life. That alienation was enough that Riley was the Animus in S4 and died in the RV in S5. And it ultimately ties to a one-car accident where Tony and Jessica, his parents, die. Xander is sure that this was a murder, that it's a Sunnydale thing, but Giles believes it just happened. Xander moves in with him for a month as he starts to get his life together, but that disagreement, and the social bonds that break, end up with Anya guiding Xander into the suburban dream while everyone else falls and fails into the barely-functional future we see.
So it rests on the car crash.
And we see an Anya so intent on her perfect Norman Rockwell home. (like Debbie Rae, and if you know, you know.) So intent that she hits her daughter with a stupid marble rolling pin. This is 100% conjecture, but the more I think of it, and I think the valkyrie!Anya vs OC Anya argument and the evil twin back it up, but Anya arranged the car crash and Yoko Factored Xander out of the Core Four, which caused madness and pain and death on a planet-wide scale, which is fine, because Anya has the white picket fence and the stupid marble rolling pin.
I think the spell gets Anya's blood. Just not from where they wanted it from.
I'll point out also that, while we're hitting the high points of Xander's love life, we hardly hear about Cordy. Could be something, could be nothing. In canon, Cordy is in a coma and sliding away to becoming a Power That Be when Xander gets called, and neither called each other on screen in four years. If we have Anya kill Cordy between "Doppelgängland" and "City of", as a hedge against Xander's wandering eye, perhaps at a point where bodies would be piling up (Graduation?), you get an Anya whose bad acts come closer to justifying her death to get Cleveland Xander home. Of course, who is going to be mad enough to do that? OC Xander, and suddenly we get OC Xander in Cleveland, because the Xanders are the same as far as magic is concerned.
The dangling of the Cordylessness of the OC 'verse might be the reason for the double-wide "final" episode could be to do that, or it could be that Liz wrote herself into a corner. We have Team Cleveland living on nervous energy but thinking they're clocking time until it all finished. Anti-Anya is mostly comic relief. They're on stand-by until an event they can know about and react to occurs. New Slayer Haley is asleep and trying to process her friends being dead. (C!Xander told her that her friends are dead for the same reasons he told Buffy Willow said to kick his ass, because there's a kill-you outcome and there's everything else, and his not-daughter Daugherty Haley hating him forever is far better than her being dead.) Anya is unconscious. C!Xander is waking up and about to excuse himself into a mental hospital. Spooky Willow, this nightmare Gollum version of her, is waiting. She needs OC!Xander and is watching.
There are exactly three moving parts on the board right now. OC!Xander, who hates everyone in his house but Haley right now. Rupert, whose situation is not as dire as it was in DGL when he crushed the power center and undemoned Anyanka, but is close to any other world has to be better. Faith, older and wiser and wanting nothing more right now than to drink herself blotto so she can hold off on seeing tortured dead tweens in her dreams forever and ever.
This makes the ending on exposition the problem. The things they take as obvious are things that they assume are true across both universes but aren't. Not that C!Xander would be much more open, but if he could say "No. No, they're alive. They're in Ventura. Dad's always hitting me up for money. It's embarrassing.", A everybody involved could search back for the breaking point.
My conjecture is that the end, if the characters would allow it, would be that OC!Xander kills Anya. We know he's killed before. This triggers him to go to Cleveland, much to everyone's chagrin.
Except for Spooky Willow, it isn't chagrin. It's anger and pain and sadness and NO! THIS! WILL! NOT! HAPPEN! The walls of her castle prison fall down. Her tendrils, the ones causing changes that Rupert ascribed to C!Xander, cause things to break and people to die. Magic users across the world feel her pain and drive. She opens the bullet hole between worlds to drag her Xander back. If she killed Dawn, she has that nifty green energy.
And the two sides, mostly Willow and Lady Haversham, try to keep the worlds from ending. I mean, witches always trump slayers. It has always been so. But between the madness and the key energy and the decade of collecting power, it really is no match.
Until OC!Xander, Spooky's Xander, walks forward and offers his box. He'll go back, he'll be with her, but Cleveland must survive. The hole gets fixed. C!Xander says no, but it has to be this way. Whether it's spookily ever after, or if it's Xander kills Willow and then himself, it happens. I think that Rupert and OC!Faith go back too. Their darkest timeline is darker still. They might die. I could almost think that OC!Faith is relieved to finally die. I don't want that, but maybe.
But if Gollum!Willow gets her Prescious, she has to fall into the lava. That's the rules.
But, since her friends are dead, her mother is dead, her grandparents are dead and, between the darkness of various choices, her dad is no longer her dad (or is dead), Haley is either taken in by Rupert and/or Faith, or crosses back and lives in the Cleveland Mother House.
If Rupert, he's allowing himself to be the father figure he never would with Xander. This might start to change the world and the Council.
If Faith, she becomes a Mom to Haley. She has something to live for, but just exist for. She has something besides more of the same to look forward to. That could be heartbreaking.
If the Cleveland Team... I'm liking it less and less. Yes, we lose her as a character (like there's more stories there) but she's a tween in a house of argumentative teenage girls, with Buffy and Dawn and Xander and Willow and Faith as older-sibling-aged parent figures. And Giles, who is trying to manage the world. I think it could be intended as good, but she'd be lost. C!Xander loves her like the daughter he never had with the woman he lost twice. I said that Eyeless-verse was fundamentally A/X where Anya isn't there. I think Water Hold Me Down is the same. But I'm not sure he could do that, or be that. Be the watcher/father that Haley needs after being orphaned by OC!Anya and Xander.
I just had a realization. Her grandparents exist. I had a thought that he could let her live with Tony and Jessica. Then I had a violent backlash against that. Then, real Uncle Rory is likely still alive, and even more no.
I'm suddenly made sad by the lack of family for a fictional character who has a minor role in the narrative.
(Aside: I believe we mostly heard two-sided fights from Xander POV, and it wasn't like we ever heard him saying anything good about one parent and bad about another. But in Hell's Bells, we see a drunk and abusive Tony but we don't see Jessica fight back. It fits with the "Xander will be abusive" thing of the episode, but it paints a different picture then we've seen.)
And knowing Liz, there is no way any of this could be resolved in less than 20 chapters.
And I'm very sad I'll never read it.