Bitter If Steeped to Long, The Commentary Track
I've read and enjoyed remixes for a while now. Before I got into writing fanfic myself, some of the best stories I read were remixes. Thus I was thrilled when I found out that I qualified for the remix and after a short moment of panic (1000 words minimum? I can't write 1000 words minimum!), I signed up, buoyed by managing to write long stories (long for me, anyway) for summer_of_giles and spring_with_xan.
Then I got my assignment. I had read "Seraph" by snickfic and enjoyed it, but was very grateful it was a WIP and thus not available for remix. So I looked over the other stories, helpfully listed on her index page. Pretty soon I had a candidate. " A Man of Many Colors". I hadn't written Oz before, so for a week or so, I was trying out permutations on "A Man of Many Colors", trying to get a handle on how to remix it. For me, a remix needs to add something to the original. From an additional emotional dimension, to an expansion and background on the plot. Something needs to happen to make the remix worth reading and writing. Otherwise, what's the pint of writing it? So I need a story I can add something to. Ultimately though, I couldn't get a grip on "A Man of Many Colors". No variation I had tried out added something. For a short while I toyed with Recipe, just because I like Dawn. No luck.
Meanwhile the deadline crept closer and at the same time my second summer_of_giles story was getting close to posting day and I hadn't written anything there yet, either. Life conspiring to keep me from writing It didn't help either, by adding in-the-office days and additional jobs and yes, I do have a family too. Cue panic. Cue more panic.
Re-reading the stories again for the umpteenth time, I suddenly got stuck on " Genuine Old British Guy Tea". Just because Buffy's explanation on why Spike had told her how to make tea didn't sound right. It sounded like a typical Buffy fib. There had to be more to this. I had my remix source. I was going to focus on the conversation between Spike and Buffy, making this a "Meanwhile at the Ranch"-remix, with a POV-shift thrown in for good measure. I knew there had to be something there, otherwise Spike would have gleefully told Buffy to boil the leaves with the water for half an hour and maybe to add a dash of vinegar or something.
The deadline came closer and my writing time was scarce and scarcer, and the summer_of_giles story wasn't finished either. Why exactly did I sign up for this again?
I couldn't get the dialogue between Buffy and Spike to work. I'm normally a dialogue writer. Not this time. Maybe I needed to tell the story in a flashback, adding yet one more layer of distance between the original and the remix.
Roughly two days before the remix deadline, I had a skeleton. I would focus on the Buffy/Spike interaction, telling the whole thing in a flashback. I was working on a reason why Buffy would reminisce and what exactly was said, but I finally had a hook. Unfortunately at the same time real life turned hectic. In the end I begged off a very nice afternoon with friends to sequester myself in a cafe and write. With roughly 12 hours to spare to the deadline. Yay.
Thus we come to the story. Comments in red.
Title: Bitter If Steeped To Long (The Broken Orange Pekoe Remix)
The title was actually the last thing I wrote. I had already posted the story at the comm, five hours before the deadline. Initially with the original title. The remix title I added in the lj editing form. I knew it was going to be something with tea, so I googled and wikipedia'd tea jargon, went through various variations of the grade from Flowery to Flowery Tippy etc. In the end I went with the simple "Broken Orange Pekoe" even if Assam tea doesn't usually come in that quality. (Yeah, I checked that. Teeny tiny case of obsessiveness.)
The story still had the original title at that time. A day later, I ogged in again and looked over the story again. And the title nagged at me. Finally "Bitter if Steeped To Long" came to me as the distillation of the entire story. Whew.
She's a California girl. Starbucks generation. Child of mochas and lattes and flavored sirups. And yet her hands rinse out the teapot and she waits until the water is cold to fill the kettle with fresh cold water.
Present tense. I needed to seperate the three narrative lines and toyed with typography but finally settled on tense. Present, past perfect and simple past. Once I had that, the whole story just clicked and flowed.
"You start with cold water," Spike had said. Her stare must have conveyed all the appropriate sarcasm, because he continued immediately. "Cold water is important. Don't use the luke warm stuff that's left in the kettle, it doesn't taste right."
Spike telling the recipe turned out to be the the axis of the story. The instructions break the story into neat little parts and provide the structure for everything. I do far better, if I can shoehorn the story into some kind of formal structure. Gives me something to cling to while I fish for the next words. Because the dalogue turned out to be difficult, I limited direct speech to Spike only. Everything else would be silent.
You know what? He was right. So fresh, cold water it is. And good water too. The Scottish Highlands may not have much, but they certainly have good water. She switches the kettle on. She has a tiny kitchenette in her apartment, the perks of being Big Boss Slayer. She even has an espresso machine. And she uses it too. But in the lonely hours tea is just better. She knows exactly when tea became the comfort drink.
Present tense again. The reference to the Scottish Highlands establishes the setting in Season 8 continuity. Giles is estranged from Buffy and partners with Faith, Buffy is alone as the commander of the slayer army. I had just written a story with Giles and Faith in Season 8, so it was natural to set this remix in the same period. Besides, I like the comics.
That night when Giles was sick.
And the first flashback establishing the pattern.
"When the water is almost boiling, put some in the pot," Spike had said. "The pot needs to warm up," he answered her unspoken question. "So swirl it around and let it sit in the pot a bit. "
It actually turned out to be surprisingly difficult to find out the "official" way of making English tea. I read a dozen recipes and finally distilled something for Spike to say.
The kettle is close to boiling, so she does as she learned so long ago. She likes that stage. She holds the pot in both hands while she slowly rotates it. She feels it warming up, while the kettle starts wheezing. She ponders a bit then takes one of the tins. A simple Assam, nothing fancy, and how weird is it that she can tell sorts of tea apart? Giles probably can tell the mountain it was grown on and whether the guys harvesting it wash their hands daily.
Tea connoisseurs are probably as silly as the extreme wine experts which I allude to here.
"One spoon per cup. And don't be wimpy with the tea," Spike had said. "And one spoon for the pot. And don't forget to put the infuser in, before you add the tea. That's the cup with holes in the side. You put that into the pot, and the tea into the infuser."
Oh, the infuser. For some reason I was convinced you'd use two teapots, one for steeping ad one for serving. Turns out that's entirely correct. For chinese tea. which you brew repeatedly with the same leaves. I had all those lovely similes with the two pots. And had to ruthlessly cut it out again. Why can't the British make their tea the way I thought they do? Don't answer that.
One spoon per cup. She pours out the water and measures the loose leaf tea. And one for the pot.
Short time in the present and we finally hit the first real flashback.
Giles was sick. Probably not the first time and it really wasn't something serious. But for some reason it was the first time she was there, being college girl without curfew and mom-wants-me-home obligations. So she came by and found him sleeping on the couch looking thoroughly miserable.
I knew the flashback was going to be entirely dialogue-free and I tried for a kind of colloquial tone here. Not exactly how she would tell it to Willow, but not the formal literary writing either.
"When the water is really boiling, that's when you pour it in," Spike had said. "Don't be timid, the tea leaves need to be stirred up at first. Then let it rest. It does the rest of the work itself."
Again with the two teapots which do not exist and thus are not in the story anymore. Can you tell I liked that image?
The fist splash of water on the tea leaves is her favorite moment. The clear water splashes into the almost black gritty stuff. Then it's just pouring. But that moment is special.
That is actually projection. I like that moment when making coffee or tea.
She had tiptoed through the apartment then, checking whether he was set for chicken soup. She didn't actually know how to make chicken soup then, that came later, with Dawn's first real cold and a lot of help by Willow. That day she just knew that chicken soup was good when her mom made it. And it was just a part of being sick. A small noise had her hesitating. Spike. He was probably tied up in the bathtub again. So she went to check up on him.
Chicken soup. For some reason chicken soup seems to be a staple diet when you're sick in America. I have no idea whether that is actually true, a cliché or just a foolish stranger's mistake but it worked in the context.
"You put the lid on the pot and then put the tea cozy on it," Spike had said. "The what?" had escaped her before she could stop it. Spike had looked at her like you look at the slightly retarded neighbor's child. "It's a felt or knitted cover to keep the pot warm. Looks like a woolen hat. If you can't find it, just wrap a towel around the pot."
Remember what I said about direct speech only being Spike? Here I broke that rule. I couldn't manage to get this right without Buffy's interjection. Also, tea cozies are frightening, when you google for images.
She has a silly castle-shaped tea cozy. She. has. a. tea cozy. And she covers the pot. Silly little felt castle in her kitchen in a not-so-silly big real castle.
I really liked that image. It had to be a castle-shaped cozy. And we tie this even tighter to Season 8.
Spike was watching TV. Quiet for once. He told her that Giles had been sick the whole day. He told her that sometime in the afternoon the fun of tormenting a sick man had worn of. And hey, he had stopped, so no need for the threatening with sticks. They had fallen silent for a moment. And then she had asked him if he knew how to make chicken soup. And Spike had just looked at her and told her vampire here and how should he know. And besides, the watcher, so he told her, the watcher didn't need american chicken soup, he needed a good cuppa. Because that was what Englishmen needed when they were sick. And when she had asked then, if it was one or two tea bags per cup, he had ranted at her and then told her how to make tea.
Indirect speech, how I love thee. When you tell a story to a friend you don't use direct speech. You rephrase and use -- usually bastardized -- indirect speech. And we come to the crux. Tricking Spike sounded strange. Here he volunteers the information out of sympathy with a fellow countryman. I hope that snickfic won't see that as criticism of her story. In her context it works great ad makes a funny punch line.
"Then let it steep. Don't move the pot," Spike had said. "If you stir it up, it just makes the tea bitter. Leave it for five minutes, then take the infuser out. Slowly."
The line about the bitter tea was added after I had to bury my so very nice idea about the two pots. Otherwise Spike's dialogue would have ben too short.
She watches the dawn slowly creep over the hills while she waits. The real dawn. Her sister doesn't creep over the hills. Not at that time anyway. Even when she's awake, she stomps more than she creeps. Attack of the fifty-foot sister. She could use Giles right now. Sit with him over a cup of tea and just talk sisters and friends and being called Ma'am.
As soon as I had typed the word dawn, the joke demanded to be included. I was defenseless. At the same time I reinforced the whole isolation of command idea.
She had left Spike, threatening to gag him if he made noise, and he said that he would gladly eat them all, but he wasn't going to be cruel to the watcher, because he was in said watcher's bathtub and slight case of dependency here. She had tried hard to be silent in the kitchen, gathering all the needed stuff, so she would not have to bang cupboard doors looking for essentials. And then she had made old British guy tea for the first time.
Spike's snark in third person was remarkably tricky, but I think I've pulled it off.
"You still need a strainer for pouring," Spike had said. "The infuser doesn't catch everything."
The first rays hit her window and she turns to carefully take the leaves out. She's seen the modern paper infuser holders and they work well and it's less of a mess when washing up, but she keeps the ceramic. People usually stay with things the way they learned them. Just like suffering alone. Giles knows all about that. And she does, too. If you're miserable, crawl into your hole and shut out everybody. She knows that one really well. Did it often. Still does it. And yet. At least she drinks tea.
When Giles woke up, she had just finished making the tea. Maybe the smell had roused him. He had looked miserable and when he had said her name, there was a lot of unspoken 'leave me alone' in there. So she had called him on it and put on her cheery face and gave him tea. At first he had been suspicious, but his face had lost a ton of wrinkles at the smell.
The "leave me to suffer in peace" line turned out to be the key for the whole story. Because that's what all of the Scoobies do. They rather suffer alone than talk to each other.
"The watcher takes one spoon of sugar," Spike had said. "Vampire, not blind. Been here long enough to know how he likes his tea."
She likes her tea a little sweeter and with milk, so she puts milk and sugar in her cup and then pours the tea. Carrying the cup, she sits on the windowsill again and watches the red glow. She takes her first sip. The tea helps, but what she really needs is company she can't send away.
When Giles had taken his first sip he had looked so much better. She had made up a story about tricking it out of Spike. Somehow she had thought that Spike didn't want Giles to know he had volunteered. Tea and quiet company. It had helped.
And here we leave the braid and move back into the bookend and a hopeful resolution. Something that doesn't even disagree with season 8 canon.
As soon as normal breakfast time rolls around, she is going to find Willow. Willow has his number. And then she's going to call Giles. Suffering alone is something she really wants to stop.
And done. Hope you found it interesting.
Then I got my assignment. I had read "Seraph" by snickfic and enjoyed it, but was very grateful it was a WIP and thus not available for remix. So I looked over the other stories, helpfully listed on her index page. Pretty soon I had a candidate. " A Man of Many Colors". I hadn't written Oz before, so for a week or so, I was trying out permutations on "A Man of Many Colors", trying to get a handle on how to remix it. For me, a remix needs to add something to the original. From an additional emotional dimension, to an expansion and background on the plot. Something needs to happen to make the remix worth reading and writing. Otherwise, what's the pint of writing it? So I need a story I can add something to. Ultimately though, I couldn't get a grip on "A Man of Many Colors". No variation I had tried out added something. For a short while I toyed with Recipe, just because I like Dawn. No luck.
Meanwhile the deadline crept closer and at the same time my second summer_of_giles story was getting close to posting day and I hadn't written anything there yet, either. Life conspiring to keep me from writing It didn't help either, by adding in-the-office days and additional jobs and yes, I do have a family too. Cue panic. Cue more panic.
Re-reading the stories again for the umpteenth time, I suddenly got stuck on " Genuine Old British Guy Tea". Just because Buffy's explanation on why Spike had told her how to make tea didn't sound right. It sounded like a typical Buffy fib. There had to be more to this. I had my remix source. I was going to focus on the conversation between Spike and Buffy, making this a "Meanwhile at the Ranch"-remix, with a POV-shift thrown in for good measure. I knew there had to be something there, otherwise Spike would have gleefully told Buffy to boil the leaves with the water for half an hour and maybe to add a dash of vinegar or something.
The deadline came closer and my writing time was scarce and scarcer, and the summer_of_giles story wasn't finished either. Why exactly did I sign up for this again?
I couldn't get the dialogue between Buffy and Spike to work. I'm normally a dialogue writer. Not this time. Maybe I needed to tell the story in a flashback, adding yet one more layer of distance between the original and the remix.
Roughly two days before the remix deadline, I had a skeleton. I would focus on the Buffy/Spike interaction, telling the whole thing in a flashback. I was working on a reason why Buffy would reminisce and what exactly was said, but I finally had a hook. Unfortunately at the same time real life turned hectic. In the end I begged off a very nice afternoon with friends to sequester myself in a cafe and write. With roughly 12 hours to spare to the deadline. Yay.
Thus we come to the story. Comments in red.
Title: Bitter If Steeped To Long (The Broken Orange Pekoe Remix)
The title was actually the last thing I wrote. I had already posted the story at the comm, five hours before the deadline. Initially with the original title. The remix title I added in the lj editing form. I knew it was going to be something with tea, so I googled and wikipedia'd tea jargon, went through various variations of the grade from Flowery to Flowery Tippy etc. In the end I went with the simple "Broken Orange Pekoe" even if Assam tea doesn't usually come in that quality. (Yeah, I checked that. Teeny tiny case of obsessiveness.)
The story still had the original title at that time. A day later, I ogged in again and looked over the story again. And the title nagged at me. Finally "Bitter if Steeped To Long" came to me as the distillation of the entire story. Whew.
She's a California girl. Starbucks generation. Child of mochas and lattes and flavored sirups. And yet her hands rinse out the teapot and she waits until the water is cold to fill the kettle with fresh cold water.
Present tense. I needed to seperate the three narrative lines and toyed with typography but finally settled on tense. Present, past perfect and simple past. Once I had that, the whole story just clicked and flowed.
"You start with cold water," Spike had said. Her stare must have conveyed all the appropriate sarcasm, because he continued immediately. "Cold water is important. Don't use the luke warm stuff that's left in the kettle, it doesn't taste right."
Spike telling the recipe turned out to be the the axis of the story. The instructions break the story into neat little parts and provide the structure for everything. I do far better, if I can shoehorn the story into some kind of formal structure. Gives me something to cling to while I fish for the next words. Because the dalogue turned out to be difficult, I limited direct speech to Spike only. Everything else would be silent.
You know what? He was right. So fresh, cold water it is. And good water too. The Scottish Highlands may not have much, but they certainly have good water. She switches the kettle on. She has a tiny kitchenette in her apartment, the perks of being Big Boss Slayer. She even has an espresso machine. And she uses it too. But in the lonely hours tea is just better. She knows exactly when tea became the comfort drink.
Present tense again. The reference to the Scottish Highlands establishes the setting in Season 8 continuity. Giles is estranged from Buffy and partners with Faith, Buffy is alone as the commander of the slayer army. I had just written a story with Giles and Faith in Season 8, so it was natural to set this remix in the same period. Besides, I like the comics.
That night when Giles was sick.
And the first flashback establishing the pattern.
"When the water is almost boiling, put some in the pot," Spike had said. "The pot needs to warm up," he answered her unspoken question. "So swirl it around and let it sit in the pot a bit. "
It actually turned out to be surprisingly difficult to find out the "official" way of making English tea. I read a dozen recipes and finally distilled something for Spike to say.
The kettle is close to boiling, so she does as she learned so long ago. She likes that stage. She holds the pot in both hands while she slowly rotates it. She feels it warming up, while the kettle starts wheezing. She ponders a bit then takes one of the tins. A simple Assam, nothing fancy, and how weird is it that she can tell sorts of tea apart? Giles probably can tell the mountain it was grown on and whether the guys harvesting it wash their hands daily.
Tea connoisseurs are probably as silly as the extreme wine experts which I allude to here.
"One spoon per cup. And don't be wimpy with the tea," Spike had said. "And one spoon for the pot. And don't forget to put the infuser in, before you add the tea. That's the cup with holes in the side. You put that into the pot, and the tea into the infuser."
Oh, the infuser. For some reason I was convinced you'd use two teapots, one for steeping ad one for serving. Turns out that's entirely correct. For chinese tea. which you brew repeatedly with the same leaves. I had all those lovely similes with the two pots. And had to ruthlessly cut it out again. Why can't the British make their tea the way I thought they do? Don't answer that.
One spoon per cup. She pours out the water and measures the loose leaf tea. And one for the pot.
Short time in the present and we finally hit the first real flashback.
Giles was sick. Probably not the first time and it really wasn't something serious. But for some reason it was the first time she was there, being college girl without curfew and mom-wants-me-home obligations. So she came by and found him sleeping on the couch looking thoroughly miserable.
I knew the flashback was going to be entirely dialogue-free and I tried for a kind of colloquial tone here. Not exactly how she would tell it to Willow, but not the formal literary writing either.
"When the water is really boiling, that's when you pour it in," Spike had said. "Don't be timid, the tea leaves need to be stirred up at first. Then let it rest. It does the rest of the work itself."
Again with the two teapots which do not exist and thus are not in the story anymore. Can you tell I liked that image?
The fist splash of water on the tea leaves is her favorite moment. The clear water splashes into the almost black gritty stuff. Then it's just pouring. But that moment is special.
That is actually projection. I like that moment when making coffee or tea.
She had tiptoed through the apartment then, checking whether he was set for chicken soup. She didn't actually know how to make chicken soup then, that came later, with Dawn's first real cold and a lot of help by Willow. That day she just knew that chicken soup was good when her mom made it. And it was just a part of being sick. A small noise had her hesitating. Spike. He was probably tied up in the bathtub again. So she went to check up on him.
Chicken soup. For some reason chicken soup seems to be a staple diet when you're sick in America. I have no idea whether that is actually true, a cliché or just a foolish stranger's mistake but it worked in the context.
"You put the lid on the pot and then put the tea cozy on it," Spike had said. "The what?" had escaped her before she could stop it. Spike had looked at her like you look at the slightly retarded neighbor's child. "It's a felt or knitted cover to keep the pot warm. Looks like a woolen hat. If you can't find it, just wrap a towel around the pot."
Remember what I said about direct speech only being Spike? Here I broke that rule. I couldn't manage to get this right without Buffy's interjection. Also, tea cozies are frightening, when you google for images.
She has a silly castle-shaped tea cozy. She. has. a. tea cozy. And she covers the pot. Silly little felt castle in her kitchen in a not-so-silly big real castle.
I really liked that image. It had to be a castle-shaped cozy. And we tie this even tighter to Season 8.
Spike was watching TV. Quiet for once. He told her that Giles had been sick the whole day. He told her that sometime in the afternoon the fun of tormenting a sick man had worn of. And hey, he had stopped, so no need for the threatening with sticks. They had fallen silent for a moment. And then she had asked him if he knew how to make chicken soup. And Spike had just looked at her and told her vampire here and how should he know. And besides, the watcher, so he told her, the watcher didn't need american chicken soup, he needed a good cuppa. Because that was what Englishmen needed when they were sick. And when she had asked then, if it was one or two tea bags per cup, he had ranted at her and then told her how to make tea.
Indirect speech, how I love thee. When you tell a story to a friend you don't use direct speech. You rephrase and use -- usually bastardized -- indirect speech. And we come to the crux. Tricking Spike sounded strange. Here he volunteers the information out of sympathy with a fellow countryman. I hope that snickfic won't see that as criticism of her story. In her context it works great ad makes a funny punch line.
"Then let it steep. Don't move the pot," Spike had said. "If you stir it up, it just makes the tea bitter. Leave it for five minutes, then take the infuser out. Slowly."
The line about the bitter tea was added after I had to bury my so very nice idea about the two pots. Otherwise Spike's dialogue would have ben too short.
She watches the dawn slowly creep over the hills while she waits. The real dawn. Her sister doesn't creep over the hills. Not at that time anyway. Even when she's awake, she stomps more than she creeps. Attack of the fifty-foot sister. She could use Giles right now. Sit with him over a cup of tea and just talk sisters and friends and being called Ma'am.
As soon as I had typed the word dawn, the joke demanded to be included. I was defenseless. At the same time I reinforced the whole isolation of command idea.
She had left Spike, threatening to gag him if he made noise, and he said that he would gladly eat them all, but he wasn't going to be cruel to the watcher, because he was in said watcher's bathtub and slight case of dependency here. She had tried hard to be silent in the kitchen, gathering all the needed stuff, so she would not have to bang cupboard doors looking for essentials. And then she had made old British guy tea for the first time.
Spike's snark in third person was remarkably tricky, but I think I've pulled it off.
"You still need a strainer for pouring," Spike had said. "The infuser doesn't catch everything."
The first rays hit her window and she turns to carefully take the leaves out. She's seen the modern paper infuser holders and they work well and it's less of a mess when washing up, but she keeps the ceramic. People usually stay with things the way they learned them. Just like suffering alone. Giles knows all about that. And she does, too. If you're miserable, crawl into your hole and shut out everybody. She knows that one really well. Did it often. Still does it. And yet. At least she drinks tea.
When Giles woke up, she had just finished making the tea. Maybe the smell had roused him. He had looked miserable and when he had said her name, there was a lot of unspoken 'leave me alone' in there. So she had called him on it and put on her cheery face and gave him tea. At first he had been suspicious, but his face had lost a ton of wrinkles at the smell.
The "leave me to suffer in peace" line turned out to be the key for the whole story. Because that's what all of the Scoobies do. They rather suffer alone than talk to each other.
"The watcher takes one spoon of sugar," Spike had said. "Vampire, not blind. Been here long enough to know how he likes his tea."
She likes her tea a little sweeter and with milk, so she puts milk and sugar in her cup and then pours the tea. Carrying the cup, she sits on the windowsill again and watches the red glow. She takes her first sip. The tea helps, but what she really needs is company she can't send away.
When Giles had taken his first sip he had looked so much better. She had made up a story about tricking it out of Spike. Somehow she had thought that Spike didn't want Giles to know he had volunteered. Tea and quiet company. It had helped.
And here we leave the braid and move back into the bookend and a hopeful resolution. Something that doesn't even disagree with season 8 canon.
As soon as normal breakfast time rolls around, she is going to find Willow. Willow has his number. And then she's going to call Giles. Suffering alone is something she really wants to stop.
And done. Hope you found it interesting.