Don't Go Solo : Part 14 - Not Good People

[waddis]

Title: Not Good People

Comments

[bluemage55]

Faith's reaction is interesting. I would have expected Faith to be a little more sympathetic to Adalia, but I can definitely see the flip side.

I'm also surprised that Faith would bother to hide a smile or laugh; she generally strikes me as a little more uninhibited than that. Spot-on character voices as usual though.

[waddis]

Trying to hide a smile and laugh here is less indicative of who she is than it is of her state of mind. They're undercover in territory that has been proven to be hostile. Xander's kind of all over the map. She's exercising more care here than she typically showed in the television series.

[bluemage55]

Ahh, makes sense.

[waddis]

I'm glad. I try to be careful with characterization.

[sam_arkand]

"‘My lord and master’ works just fine.”

Great line, and it encapsulates Faith's observations in this chapter. Xander has clearly changed. But there's flashes of the old sarcastic Xander in there. Also, that she didn't send his head into low-earth orbit for that crack means they have a pretty solid relationship/sorta friendship.

Faith's attitude on Adalia is spot-on. She'd be far less willing to cut her some slack given her own experiences in the Mayor's service.

Faith drinking something fruity is like her in the pink dress. ;)

[waddis]

Heh. They're all a little out of their elements. Between slayer gang wars and not knowing who the bad guy is, everyone's a little one edge.

[parcae_lj]

Gotta say I'm with Faith on this one.

[parcae_lj]

Regarding Adalia, that is.

[waddis]

I got'cha.

[waddis]

I could see that.

[lwbush]

Glad to see more of this one - and as interested as Faith is in the play of emotions Xander is displaying. It does say a lot about his state of mind that he's all forgiving about Adalia trying to kill him though - not like she's the first, after all. And none of the rest of them lived to try again. He probably figures someone should.

[waddis]

Something else I tried to point out (without being too obvious) in this part was the fact that he's leaning toward being understanding/forgiving with Adalia, yet Faith is suspicious that he's not doing the same for Willow.

[skarman]

Something that nobody has seemed to picked up on, neither readers nor Faith herself, is the fact that she's already seen something similar as Xander's change from the joker she knew in Sunnydale.

Namely, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.

From stuck-up Watcher, to Rogue Demon Hunter, to Angel Investigation's Research Guy, to the guy that betrayed Angel and got his throat slashed and turned into one serious badass mofo as the vernacular goes.

Faith is looking at it, yet isn't realizing it. And it seems neither do the readers. It hit me, just now, because I just read the beginning of a story where Wes from his time at W&H goes back in time to replace himself just before going to Sunnydale.

[waddis]

Xander's been compared to Wesley before, both by me and a couple of my readers. A point that might warrant some consideration is that, both for Wes and Xander, Faith was out of the loop during the time that there was changing happening.