Disclaimer: Spike, Buffy and all of ME's characters belong to Joss Whedon. The other ones, or the Anti- Scoobies are all mine mine mine.
Author's note: Sorry this is really late. I was so busy until last Friday, when I finished my last exam. Then I was gonna type it out today but I nearly got hypothermia. Also, I rediscovered the pleasures of recreational reading, in the form of a certain H.P. Lovecraft and my own idol, Neil Gaiman. Those writers are the gods of their genres. But hey on the bright side, I was finally able to find my own personal writing philosophy during the break. Albeit, it is one pilfered from Immanuel Kant but it still epitomizes what I believe an artist should do- "Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few."
Summary: A lot of stuff happened in Episode 1- go read it. You cannot possibly understand this story without the background check, and I'm not guaranteeing that you'll understand it with the background check. This deviates in tone from the first fic, due to experimentation and the inhalation of pentel pen at the time of writing. (Note that I do not condone the act of pentel pen sniffing since it is one of the major contributors to social degeneracy, right up there with white-out snorting. Really. I blame the badfic epidemic on office-supply abusers.)
* * * * * * * * * * * *
There aren't very many things one can do when one spends all of one's time tied up in a chair.
For one, the limited mobility makes it nearly impossible to do anything. With hands tied to one's sides, it's not as if one can even spend the livelong day perusing one's palms if one is esoterically inclined.
Yet in the face of the bleakest ennui the human mind is quite capable of adapting to even the most dull of circumstances.
Darcy read a book once about a man in a Siberian concentration camp who spent nearly all his time fixating on cigarettes as a way to make his living conditions more bearable. Unfortunately she doesn't have any access to cigarettes and she thinks that he had it lucky compared to her.
She used to fantasize about winning the Best Actress award and making the customary acceptance speech when she was a child but now the fantasy seems so gauche. She tried to substitute the situation with the Nobel Prize, but somehow the suspension of disbelief does not go over well enough for the fantasy to carry out.
Eventually she finds herself caressing a callus on her middle finger, situated between the top and the middle phalange, almost as a reflex or a nervous tic. The rough patch of skin was beginning to smoothen out now from disuse, aching for the touch and friction of a pen.
She remembers the days when her entire hand throbbed and cramped from too much writing, accompanied by the black smudges which smeared the lunar and Venusian mounts of her hand. Days when she would ignore the physical discomfort, galvanized by a fanatical dedication to what would materialize on the page.
It didn't matter what she wrote. Just the act of putting ink on paper was enough of a thrill for her- the act of creation.
Sometimes she would write out her notes as a form of revision for the big exam. Other times she would simply write a word again and again, fixating on it and wondering how such a strange looking thing could be so common to her. (Like the word 'thing' or the word 'the' for instance- fairly innocuous on the surface but teeming with ambiguity below)
Sometimes she would write her name out endlessly, adding curlicues and curves to embellish what she thought was a travesty of a moniker.
Darcy.
It's another addition to the long list of reasons to resent her mother, an English professor who was of the persuasion that Jane Austen was some sort of feminist and one who sought to perpetuate her literary tastes by bestowing the name on her firstborn.
Darcy loathed 'Pride and Prejudice'.
She also loathed lots of books that made in into print, and often voiced her opinions about the degeneration of the medium with cynical barbs characteristic of those who had shitty childhoods. Shakespeare was 'overrated'. Dickens was 'a righteous twat with too much fondness for parables'. Hardy was 'a fatalist who didn't know jack about women'.
It was only fitting that when she was briefly institutionalized, the only books she could find on the shelves were Austen, Hardy, Dickens and Shakespeare.
That was the deciding point at which she snapped, and began to question the insidious designs of whoever created the universe. There was simply too much symmetry in life to wring as much agony out of you as humanly possible.
It was never the big things that belied life's cruelty. It was the overdues and the lost receipts, the extra ten pounds you gained, the perpetual disarray of a vigilantly cleaned apartment or the contents of a library in a mental institution that really tipped you over the edge.
But there are definitely benefits to be reaped from the loss of sanity and illusions (after all, were they not the same thing?). There is no freedom sweeter than that of having nothing left to lose.
Which was probably why she could sit calmly in a chair, contemplating the state of a callus while being held by someone who was not only a homicidal maniac but also a fashion victim nonpareil.
He was planning something now, making calls and endlessly writing out diagrams and schemes on beautiful sheets of Oslo. He was thankfully quiet but this only increased her anxiety, knowing that this was far from over.
Sometimes he forgot that she was even alive, and that pissed her off. So she would yell, and scream and make a racket like clockwork or an alarm. Five o'clock, feeding time. Five thirty, bathroom. Seven twenty, time for her shower. She thinks she knows what infants and invalids feel like and she resolves to repent her formerly insensitive ways. Never again will she park in the handicapped zone, if she makes it out of this mess alive.
Finally on the sixth day of lamenting the state of her callus, she finally makes a demand.
"Hey you, blond boy. Gimme a pen and some paper."
Author's note: Sorry this is really late. I was so busy until last Friday, when I finished my last exam. Then I was gonna type it out today but I nearly got hypothermia. Also, I rediscovered the pleasures of recreational reading, in the form of a certain H.P. Lovecraft and my own idol, Neil Gaiman. Those writers are the gods of their genres. But hey on the bright side, I was finally able to find my own personal writing philosophy during the break. Albeit, it is one pilfered from Immanuel Kant but it still epitomizes what I believe an artist should do- "Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few."
Summary: A lot of stuff happened in Episode 1- go read it. You cannot possibly understand this story without the background check, and I'm not guaranteeing that you'll understand it with the background check. This deviates in tone from the first fic, due to experimentation and the inhalation of pentel pen at the time of writing. (Note that I do not condone the act of pentel pen sniffing since it is one of the major contributors to social degeneracy, right up there with white-out snorting. Really. I blame the badfic epidemic on office-supply abusers.)
* * * * * * * * * * * *
There aren't very many things one can do when one spends all of one's time tied up in a chair.
For one, the limited mobility makes it nearly impossible to do anything. With hands tied to one's sides, it's not as if one can even spend the livelong day perusing one's palms if one is esoterically inclined.
Yet in the face of the bleakest ennui the human mind is quite capable of adapting to even the most dull of circumstances.
Darcy read a book once about a man in a Siberian concentration camp who spent nearly all his time fixating on cigarettes as a way to make his living conditions more bearable. Unfortunately she doesn't have any access to cigarettes and she thinks that he had it lucky compared to her.
She used to fantasize about winning the Best Actress award and making the customary acceptance speech when she was a child but now the fantasy seems so gauche. She tried to substitute the situation with the Nobel Prize, but somehow the suspension of disbelief does not go over well enough for the fantasy to carry out.
Eventually she finds herself caressing a callus on her middle finger, situated between the top and the middle phalange, almost as a reflex or a nervous tic. The rough patch of skin was beginning to smoothen out now from disuse, aching for the touch and friction of a pen.
She remembers the days when her entire hand throbbed and cramped from too much writing, accompanied by the black smudges which smeared the lunar and Venusian mounts of her hand. Days when she would ignore the physical discomfort, galvanized by a fanatical dedication to what would materialize on the page.
It didn't matter what she wrote. Just the act of putting ink on paper was enough of a thrill for her- the act of creation.
Sometimes she would write out her notes as a form of revision for the big exam. Other times she would simply write a word again and again, fixating on it and wondering how such a strange looking thing could be so common to her. (Like the word 'thing' or the word 'the' for instance- fairly innocuous on the surface but teeming with ambiguity below)
Sometimes she would write her name out endlessly, adding curlicues and curves to embellish what she thought was a travesty of a moniker.
Darcy.
It's another addition to the long list of reasons to resent her mother, an English professor who was of the persuasion that Jane Austen was some sort of feminist and one who sought to perpetuate her literary tastes by bestowing the name on her firstborn.
Darcy loathed 'Pride and Prejudice'.
She also loathed lots of books that made in into print, and often voiced her opinions about the degeneration of the medium with cynical barbs characteristic of those who had shitty childhoods. Shakespeare was 'overrated'. Dickens was 'a righteous twat with too much fondness for parables'. Hardy was 'a fatalist who didn't know jack about women'.
It was only fitting that when she was briefly institutionalized, the only books she could find on the shelves were Austen, Hardy, Dickens and Shakespeare.
That was the deciding point at which she snapped, and began to question the insidious designs of whoever created the universe. There was simply too much symmetry in life to wring as much agony out of you as humanly possible.
It was never the big things that belied life's cruelty. It was the overdues and the lost receipts, the extra ten pounds you gained, the perpetual disarray of a vigilantly cleaned apartment or the contents of a library in a mental institution that really tipped you over the edge.
But there are definitely benefits to be reaped from the loss of sanity and illusions (after all, were they not the same thing?). There is no freedom sweeter than that of having nothing left to lose.
Which was probably why she could sit calmly in a chair, contemplating the state of a callus while being held by someone who was not only a homicidal maniac but also a fashion victim nonpareil.
He was planning something now, making calls and endlessly writing out diagrams and schemes on beautiful sheets of Oslo. He was thankfully quiet but this only increased her anxiety, knowing that this was far from over.
Sometimes he forgot that she was even alive, and that pissed her off. So she would yell, and scream and make a racket like clockwork or an alarm. Five o'clock, feeding time. Five thirty, bathroom. Seven twenty, time for her shower. She thinks she knows what infants and invalids feel like and she resolves to repent her formerly insensitive ways. Never again will she park in the handicapped zone, if she makes it out of this mess alive.
Finally on the sixth day of lamenting the state of her callus, she finally makes a demand.
"Hey you, blond boy. Gimme a pen and some paper."