Dreams from this morning.

I'm going to tell someone's parents, maybe mine, that their son has died. I'm not dressed appropriately, so I break into their garage to find clothes. I rummage through boxes, but the clothes which were recently there have been cleared out. I find a pink shirt and a pair of pink shorts, though. I look around for a place to change and a man--my dad, I think--directs me to a small bathroom. It's completely black, more like a shower stall. Its walls are one-way mirrored. I can see out, but others looking in see only the mirror. (Profound, dude.) As I'm changing, a guy--not dad--comes up to the mirror and starts smoothing back his hair, flexing his muscles, checking himself out.

Interlude where I find out my mom is appearing on a TV show. She's been a guest on the show all week as a social commentator. She heads into the studio, and I walk down a hall and watch her on a monitor. At first, she's just sitting on a chair, hands folded demurely. But when given the chance to talk, her demeanor changes--it's as if she's on Jerry Springer. She begins vociferously ranting. I'm freaked. First she was mother, and now she's not-mother. Mothers shouldn't behave like this!

In the dream, my dad and I worked for the same office. Accounting work. They fired me, and I discover that they're going to fire him too. It's petty vengeance against me. B.P. (a former VP of my department) broke the news to him. Sadistic interview, in flashback. The guy wouldn't tell my dad how much longer he'd be working--he was there at the company's whim. My dad asked if he'd ever see B.P. again. B.P. said no. My dad mused that he could at least count on working out the day. B.P. said no.

My dad and I are going out to eat. My dad goes off to get the car, my car. He drives it poorly. When he arrives he calls out that he accidentally drove down to the beach, then around the block a few times. He can't pull up to the curb, so I dart out into traffic--he's stopped at a light--and get in through the open side door of the car, which is now a van.

At the open-air restaurant, we climb steps. My dad almost runs into a dwarf-sized woman partnered with a normal-sized man. My dad frankly stares at the midget. (Now, as I write this, I think of that line in Living in Oblivion, where the angry dwarf rebels against typecasting and says something like, "Every half-baked director thinks if he sticks a dwarf in it's a dream sequence. Have you ever dreamed of a dwarf?" Director: "Well, no, but...") I nudge my dad reprovingly and we continue climbing. On the next level, he grabs an uncleared table. Waitresses leap to clear it. I'm embarrassed, but it is seat yourself.

Segue to...

I'm incredibly excited: I've just finished watching an episode of Buffy and it's time for next week's previews. There are two weeks' worth of previews, actually--I've already seen them but wasn't paying attention because they were being recorded. Now I have the recording on some kind of computer disc. I go and stick it in the TV. Some technical anxiety about how the disc works, but then I settle down. Maygra is with me. We're no more than three feet from the screen, leaning in avidly. Actually, I'm avid. Dream Maygra is interested, but mostly just enabling my fanaticism. She is leaning, though. In fact, I notice that she's blocking the light, damn her. {grin}

First preview starts. In the dream, my consciousness unspooled every single scene with as much precision as if I'd edited it myself. Sadly, after waking, I forgot almost all of it. A change was taking place between Buffy and Spike. Voice over: "Next week, Spike makes the classiest self-sacrifice of the entire season...." My dream reaction: Huh. They're actually using the word 'classy' now. This strikes me as a weirdly explicit, self-referential and fannish way of describing Spike's actions. Some shots follow that I can't recall. Gist: a crisis has occurred, Spike has done something to prove himself, and he and Buffy have reached a new level in their relationship. It sounds terribly trite when I type it now, but in the dream I was flying so goddamn high as they built the anticipation that I risked passing out from lack of oxygen. Then came a shot with Buffy's dad reading and rattling his newspaper, expositioning, "One phone call and she's off to Florida. Hmmph." Hint that Spike called her needing help, and she went. Hint that a few months had passed, because we cut to Buffy saying sincerely, "I would never go back to what I was before, after living with you." Reaction shot of boyfriend Spike, then back to Buffy: "And red." She glances his way, signficantly downward. "I would never have guessed red."

At this point in the dream, I shriek like a rabid preteen and throw myself back, flat on the floor, trembling with exquisite delight. Because in this dream season, we hadn't known before that they'd slept together, and now here was the proof.

Meanwhile, Buffy is showing Spike glossy magazine pictures of trucks, with the intention of having him choose which one he wants. She's going to buy one for him--or perhaps for them both, because he's actually very rich.

Sigh. This transcription really doesn't convey at all the high-strung excitement of the dream, the knowledge that radical new developments were going to take place.

Second preview was for another musical, and I recall thinking how strange and daring it was of them to revisit that that format so soon after OMWF. It was an AU version of Sunnydale High, but enveiled in perpetual darkness. Sort of like a Buffy version of Grease, everyone's character severely twisted, the place crawling with vamps and demons. We see a series of AU shots: Buffy and Spike surrounded by friends at a cafeteria table, Buffy singing. They're boyfriend and girlfriend; Spike is grunged down, and has long straight hair that screams garage band. Shot of preppy AU Xander sitting with beefy jock pals, wearing a letterman's jacket. Shot of Willow as a teacher--older, face lined with worry, glasses, hurrying through the hall clutching books in her arms, expectant and fearful of being picked on. Then we cut to outside the school; it's night, it's autumn, it's a pep rally, and a gang of vampires is hanging out near the chain-link fence, cruising for snacks.

He saluted and walked off jauntily, leaving Buffy smiling.

He could feel her smile warming his back as he walked away. It took a lot to walk away from her. Putting safe distance between them--that's the way to look at it, mate. You're a bloody hero, he reminded himself, the thought teetering ironically between gloom and puffery. It was a cold night, though, even for the unliving. Cold night, colder bed. And she'd had on that fuzzy sweater, blue with ribbons, which he'd salvaged from her house not long after the invasion and brought to her. That and a box of knick-knacks. Hairbrush, bits of frippery, stuffed animals. He remembered that scene with a wince: her eyes big and shiny with unshed tears, his own helplessness as he stood there holding the box out, shredded by the sight of her pain and feeling a right git, certain his gesture had done more harm than good.

Worn the sweater though, hadn't she. And tonight she'd been warm and soft under his hands; even through the damned gloves he could feel her. Wondering idly what color knickers she'd been wearing, Spike reached for a smoke, then realized he'd given over the pack. He stifled a curse.

Steam poured up from sidewalk grates, swirled aside by his passage. The street was deserted except for him and a couple of guardsmen patrolling for curfew violators. When they saw him, they swerved his way with intent to maim, but drew up short when their piggy little eyes focused on his stripes. The shorter of the two chopped his tusks together sharply and saluted before they moved on. Spike sketched a salute back with an expression of distaste they didn't see.

Sunnydale reminded him more and more of Berlin in the dark days, even to the occasional air raid--though the Volstag beasties made less of an impact than the Allies had, given they could only erupt out of their underworld ghetto at certain times of the lunar cycle. They'd had a chance tonight, but so far the skies remained clear. As the hotel where he resided came into view, Spike could see the faint blue shimmer of magical shielding holding steady.

In the windows overlooking the street one curtain twitched; Spike glimpsed it from below as he walked by. He was still a block from his hotel. He shot a glance sideways at the building. The Sunnydale Arms. Cheap apartments. Caldarth demons living there now. Sleepless. Filthy lot, too. Leaving skins like rotten banana peels in the halls, bringing down property values. No danger. Curious buggers, that's all.

Curious.

Spike casually crossed the street, turned the corner and doubled back along the rear alley of the block. He scouted the alley with care, heard nothing. Felt no presence. At the service entrance of the apartment building, he swung himself up onto the fire escape and climbed light-footedly to the third floor, then let himself in a window. The hallway stank of shed skin and had the peculiar emptiness of a building whose rat population had met genocide on hors d'oeuvre trays.

From the nearest apartment came the recorded tinkle of a piano and some baby-voiced bint he recalled from the thirties singing, "Love is good for anything that ails you..."

"Bleedin' nostalgia," Spike muttered. "Must be puttin' in the water with fluoride." He ghosted down the corridor, took a turn, and grabbed the nearest thing that moved. It squeaked in alarm.

"Hey, hey, hey--" The demon tried to pull away but Spike's grip tightened. Its pink skin went pinker with distress, casting a faint electrical glow into the darkness of the hall. Patches of damp pink skin were barely visible, surfacing from the otherwise lumpy shadows of the creature's face and form.

"Shandy. Thought I recollected you lived here now." Spike smiled in a nasty way.

"Spike. I-it's good to see you."

"Course it is. Couldn't have missed me, keeping an eye out like that. Six of 'em, even."

Shandy gurgled what passed for a nervous laugh. "No, no. A complete mistake. Just getting some fresh air."

"You a huffer, then? Dangerous habit, that. Hear that fresh air'll strip pores raw on your sort, get the slime ducts--" Spike paused. "Slimin'."

"Ha ha, yes. I should turn in now." The demon made another effort to slip Spike's grasp.

"You'll turn into a messy stain on the floor if you don't tell me who's got you on sentry duty."

Half of Shandy's eyes closed; the other half twitched with tics. "Okay, okay." His whispery voice lowered to a resigned breath, barely audible beyond a vampire's ears. "It's the General."

Spike let go of Shandy's arm. "Nilec."

"He wants to know when you come, when you go."

"Does he." The wheels of thought sped distractingly, and Spike barely noticed as Shandy began edging away. Then his hand shot out and closed around the demon's throat. Its moist jowls hung heavily around his wrist, brushing the pristine cuff. Spike tilted his head, sliding into game face.

Tonight I'm trying to write demon noir, but fantasizing about human Spike. It would solve so many problems if one night in the graveyard some bored demigod waved a hand his way and shoved him back into a suit of mortal flesh. First, a make-over wouldn't hurt. The long black coat, the jeans, the peroxide--beautiful, yeah, but it's ninety percent empty vamp persona. Spike can still be a snarky, bitter, twisted bastard without it. Hawaiian shirt and surf shorts? No. But hold on a tick. So, second problem solved: Whedon & Co. could keep James Marsters around for as long as they wanted, without fear of inexplicable aging. Third problem solved: duh. Buffy wants Spike, Spike wants Buffy. Demon comes between them, and Buffy just can't let herself accept that.

Questions to consider--how much of Spike is demon and how much William? How deeply is the Spike personality entwined with the William personality? I'd say, quite a lot. I think with a soul on board, it's just as likely you'd have an embittered Spilliam who broods about the ambivalencies of his human condition, much as Darla resented her restored humanity.

So, human Spike: he claps a hand to his chest, feels his beating heart, says, "Bugger!" with alarm. First reaction outrage, second reaction more outrage. Then he immediately zeros in nearsightedly on the important question: is this going to get him Buffy? Thinking so, he embraces his new humanity with lunatic zest, over-compensating as usual. Buffy pushes him away, he sulks, resigns himself to the long haul. Wackiness ensues as he tries to figure out how to take care of himself--and his development would surely be far more visible than Anya's was, because we got to see almost nothing of the "before" Anya, demon Anya, but we've had plenty of time to get to know vampire Spike. So this would make the contrast and his reactions all the more fascinating. When not stalking Buffy or watching Dawn, he's almost completely self-absorbed and self-obsessive. Now that he has to eat for nutrition, you know he'd sit at the kitchen table spooning in the Fruit Loops and reading the ingredients on the box all the way down to red dye number 9. Then he'd decide sod worrying, he'd eat whatever the bloody hell he wanted to, but later he'd stare in the mirror pensively and wonder if he was getting fat.

He'd be conflicted over his loss of powers, and pour a lot of energy into keeping up his strength and fighting skills. He'd take pride in his body, but hate any display of his own weakness. He'd still have a blase attitude toward demons, though perhaps a new distaste would creep in from time to time. ("Don't recall them smellin' that bad when I was vamped.")

Interaction with the Scoobies: Xander begins by firmly adhering to a policy of hating him now as much as ever. Anya is his perky advocate, and they have long chatty moments where they compare conversion stories. Willow and Tara are sympathetic if wary, but ease into friendship so gradually it seems perfectly natural. Dawn is accepting and eager to show him the ropes, since it lets her be the expert on humanity. Xander of course comes around eventually to the point of tolerance.

Angel comes to visit and is appalled. Snerk.

Buffy is cautious and uncomfortable with human Spike. Human Spike thinks maybe he's lost his edge and that he can no longer compel Buffy's interest. His initial peacock display of enthusiasm for humanity becomes more and more warped until he's taking dangerous risks to prove himself to her, not unlike Riley did. He's far more vulnerable now and doesn't quite realize it. Lovely bruises. Lovely bleeding and pain. Buffy finally intervenes, tries to stop his desperate headlong fling toward self-sacrifice. She folds her hand, lets him love her. Falls for him in return.

All this must in the natural course of things lead to Big Pain. Drusilla returns, Spike is changed back--or Spike isn't changed back but still has a deadly, serial-killer streak in him a la Faith that eventually drives a wedge between him and Buffy.

Or, Spike grows increasingly Gilesish as William surfaces, returns to wearing his little glasses, lets his hair go all floppy, and we most often see him walking around absently, carrying a book--demonology texts in Latin, poetry, The Shipping News. He gets all domestic, learns to cook up a storm, takes care of Dawn, and it drives Buffy crazy how husbandy he is all of a sudden. She's not ready for this! This isn't what she signed up for! An ex-vamp in an apron! ("Feeling peckish, love? I can warm up the casserole." "I, oh God, I have to patrol now. PLEASE don't wait up.")

Anna records the thoughts before breakfast that are usually lost to posterity...

Anyone who doesn't sing along with Joni Mitchell's "California" is not human. They may be a very nice demon, though.

Do you ever have that one bowl of dinner that you don't want to deal with, so you cover it up with a plate and leave it on your counter until it grows fuzzy and then you want to deal with it even less? Yeah.

Neurotic Anxiety #364. If you have a baking pan where the non-stick coating has come off, and the base metal begins to get rusty if you leave it soaking, then surely there's rust particles you can't see after you're done washing it, and they could get into your stomach lining and be absorbed into your bloodstream and give you tetanus. Right?

I think I must have the most disgusting counter top in all of Christendom right now. Fortunately, I live five miles outside the city limits of Christendom and it doesn't matter.

Ouch! Okay, there's that one piece of broken glass I missed, protruding from my toe. No, wait... (examining) ...that's a breadcrumb. What the fuck?

Calgon, whisk me away! Calgon, fly me away. Calgon, show me the way to go home. Beam me up, Calgon.

Things you do at three in the morning. Make banal lists. Listen to CDs. Find forgotten scraps in your e-mail folders and foist them on the world. Find things to do that prevent you from both writing and sleeping. The following is a truly monstrous and miscellaneous middle-of-the-night melange. Watch for sudden hairpin turns of mood and tone.

Christmas 2000

A list post from one year ago, one day before Christmas, proof of how little changes....

Hmm. I bought myself Bushmills, an Everclear CD, and a novel about a hit man. Of course, "Everclear" does not scream "punk suicide," but could be the reason for it.

Anyone else celebrating their holiday by imbibing spirits and dreaming of violence?

Ten Things on my Fridge Right Now

1. Kleenex coupon
2. Kanji magnet saying "prosperity"
3. Michaelangelo's David in Drag magnet set
4. Kozmo.com dry-erase memo pad
5. Domino's delivery magnet
6. postcard from England from my sorely neglected friend Susan
7. canceled check for a printer I never bought, dated 1999
8. magnets of Jim and Blair
9. my landlords' address and phone number
10. ostensibly innocuous magnet set from a bank in celebration of Thanksgiving, some of whose words have been rearranged to say, "hopefully we should be able to watch our favorite children mashed loudly"

Moody Music

A compilation that doesn't really exist except in my head. I first had two lists, but I decided to dump them together and make a double CD set. This is basically "Saint Soundtrack of the Blue Mood of Perpetual Angst" meets "Saint Soundtrack of Repressed Rage and Auditory Avoidance." The rage starts up somewhere around "Everything Zen." In looking over the list now, I'm tempted to conclude that I don't have enough musical accompaniment to match my rage. I tend to stay on the soft side of edgy when it comes to music. Still, three Bush and three Tool CDs seem to do the trick.

Confession -- Richard Shindell
Pennies from Heaven -- Arthur Tracey
Lucky -- Bif Naked
Wild Horses -- The Sundays
The Dead Are Dancing -- Toni Childs
Northwest Passage -- Stan Rogers
Thick as Thieves -- Natalie Merchant
River -- Natalie Merchant
Hold On -- Sarah McLachlan
The Last Time I Saw Richard -- Joni Mitchell
Slip Slidin' Away -- Paul Simon
40 Miles from the Sun -- Bush
Fear -- Sarah McLachlan
Don't Give Up -- Peter Gabriel
Prince of Darkness -- Indigo Girls
Alive -- Pearl Jam
Slim Slow Slider -- Van Morrison
Bells for Her -- Tori Amos
The Girl with the Weight of the World in Her Hands -- Indigo Girls
Everything Zen -- Bush
46 & 2 -- Tool
You Oughta Know -- Alanis Morissette
Prison Sex -- Tool
Mouth -- Bush
Swallowed -- Bush
El Distorto De Melodica -- Everclear
Jeremy -- Pearl Jam

A Small Dog

An old list post from one of my folders, expressing pet peevishness in the direction of Sentinel, i.e., things in stories that annoy the piss out of me. Or did at the time. A briefer version lives on the Big List, Small Dogs page.

If I ever see another instance of Jim 'cataloging' something I will weep. The man has cataloged every single frickin' thing in the universe by now. There's nothing left! He can stop! He must have a full card catalog, an entire library, of perfectly indexed sensory moments. And, excuse me, but no more: Blair's mouth must be officially designated a romantic compost heap of oranges, molasses, honeysuckle, lasagna, tea, tea, tea, coffee, milk, salmon, chocolate, toothpaste, the saliva of his most recent girlfriend, the semen of his most recent boyfriend, mint, chlorine, salt, oregano, onions, peanuts and tongue.

Cow's tongue, that is.

Sonnet

A Sentinel sonnet I once wrote.

As a panther from his range returning
You come home to habitat, to habit,
To me, sole tribal in your den, waiting,
Native to need, to our heated climate.
Predator to my artful prey, you stalk
While I weave fancy to beguile your guard
And to diversion turn the trick of talk,
Always flirting, the flay of truth deferred.
Were I to break this sustained, aimless dance,
Resume the stricter guidance of my path,
My steps might find the relearned road to sense
And to shadow leave the senseless haunt of past.
    But though by nature stirred to restless flight,
    I am bred captive to the nature that I write.

Blah Blah Blah

Random comments I've made on lists, taken out of context.

 It's hard to imagine just what set of conditions would have to coincide in order for a rabid babelfish and a demented schoolgirl to mate and create this mutant offspring of language. On the other hand, perhaps Vogons live among us and aspire to slash.

 The (New) Latin word for "ghost" is lemur. Lemurophilia. Let them wonder....

 Thank you, JESUS-BOB!

 In the story I am working on now I briefly enamored myself of this phrase:

"...tipped back his throat to display the freighted swallows that carried sighs to his mouth…"

And had to take it out because it makes no actual sense. If you swallow it would be "carrying" something away from the mouth; but I could live with that, because the adam's apple has to move back up again, except that swallowing and sighing don't happen together in that way. You swallow when nervous or aroused because of saliva production. Sighs are simply breaths, in or out, and wouldn't move the throat in a noticeable swallowing motion. It would take some sound to really get the adam's apple moving, and sound implies moans not sighs. But I liked sighs because, you know, swallows. Lightness. And we won't go to the Monty Python place, okay?

See me. I sulk.

 On the appearance of 'flat, arrogant nubs' posing as nipples in a slash story...

Philosophers have pondered for centuries over the idea of nubness. "What is the essence of nubness?" they've asked, usually while drinking one too many beers. "Is the nub flat? Can a nub be both arrogant and flat? Flat and arrogant? Does one preclude the other?" Give them another beer or two and they'll be on the floor, brawling, crying, "You arrogant nub! *You* are nub! No, *you*!" and beating one another with their staffs and sometimes inadvertantly turning each other into toads. Nubbed toads, even. Which usually settles the question for a week or two.

 From August, 2000...

Superficial news from my life...my phone service was out for three days, I refuse to read my accumulated mail, I've played 300 games of Free Cell, I've managed to kill one of those large bottles of whiskey since Thursday, I have to work overtime this week, my upstairs neighbor may be a serial killer, my landlord is moody, I watched "Happy, Texas" and thought it was adorable, and I'm reading "Justice at Risk", which I've recced in somewhat sedated fashion on my page--just click the happy skull.

 On the question of "What is art?" ...

Meanwhile, I sit and build "The Sentinel" into a relatively rich tapestry of meaning--myth and subtext and homoeroticism and viewer dialogue and cultural subversion and fiction--in a way that's like graffiti-ing a subway car into art. Most people would not call the show art--it's banal, it's dull, etc. But it's a nexus of complexity into which I focus my thought, analysis, creative re-visioning, until it carries more and more meaning, more ramifications.

(Wow. Pretentious, aren't I?)

Mocking as a Form of Mourning

Parodic poem based on AE Housman's "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff" and written in Scully's voice. I'm not sure that I consider this poem especially funny, clever, or successful on the whole, but anticipating the possibility that mockery will appeal to the masses, I give permission to post this wherever you like, no need to ask.

Mulder, This is Stupid Stuff

Mulder, this is stupid stuff:
You call my cell phone fast enough;
There's always much amiss, it's clear,
You'd make my sainted mother jeer.
And oh, good Lord, the leaps you make,
You leave me gaping in your wake.
The girl, your poor sis, she is dead;
She sleeps well in some peat bed:
We poor agents, it's our turn now
To hunt the snipe that killed the girl.
Pretty friendship 'tis to drive
Your friends to drink and roll their eyes.
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, find a case that won't nail dad.

Why if it's nailing you would be,
There's far more deserving felons free.
Say, for what were federal agents meant,
Or why all that college money spent?
And oh a certain Bureau AD would
Love to nail your heinie good
And Walt does more than Krycek can
To save that tush from Cancer Man.
Law, Fox, Law's the truth to serve
And I swear you'll still remain a perv:
Look deep into our databanks
To find a world of freakish cranks.
Have faith, and just give up the past:
This abduction myth-arc cannot last.
Oh I got beamed up to the ship
And left my ovaries God knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Microchips and pregnant fear:
Then the world seemed all too cruel,
And I myself six kinds of fool,
Who with you dashed down rabbit holes
Happy til we lost our souls.
Then I saw the light-struck sky;
Heigh-ho, the truth was all a lie;
The world, it was the old plot still,
Cancer Man, Krycek, and Bill,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin your game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than swill,
And while I must Mulder much endure
Luck's shot to hell, but trouble's sure,
I'll face it as good agents must
And train for aliens and Krycek's lust.
It's true he's lost his arm and aim,
Is not so brisk at his old game:
Evil bitch in stinking leather
But he and Fox look good together.
What the hell if they smack each other
And boff embittered for an hour;
'Twill do Fox good to get some head
And me to guard their hotel bed;
For I'm a friend whose love runs deep,
Who'll someday off that one-armed creep.

There was a Spy reigned in the Bureau:
There, where agents stew and sorrow
And get killed before they learn why
Their government upholds the lie.
The Spy built a great unholy birth
Mingling the eggs of space and earth;
First a few clones, then an army,
To bring the crashing end of history;
And smoking, smiling, plotting always,
He still wanders our dark hallways.
Nicotine in his cancer stick
Doesn't seem to do the trick;
He's shot and mocked, loses favor
But never changes his behavior;
In turn we scheme, hide, fight and fake:
Never do we get a break.
--Will man or myth-arc ever say: *Why?*
In season eight, just let me die.

Buffy MiST

Abstracted snippets from "Willow the Vampyre Slayer?" MiSTed by Pete Milan on http://pinky.wtower.com/. Undoubtedly funnier if you've read a MiST before. I swear, these can crack me up even without having the story itself in front of me...or at least they did until four this morning, when I tiredly began to question my sanity. Right now, I'm staring stone-faced at everything I've pasted below and thinking about removing it. The story isn't that bad, is it? In fact, from what few quotes are included here, you might actually begin to think...but no. That's the four a.m. of the soul whispering insidiously in my ear. We will leave it. We will see now just how amusing you find it, and whether it will tempt you down the dark path of MiSTing. Please attach these electrodes to your head and step into the tub.

*

CROW: Last verse. If I had a date with Willow,
MIKE: If he had a date with Willow,
CROW: I'd buy her a Frappuccino.
MIKE: But not a real Frappuccino; that's cruel.

*

CROW: What, something unusual in Sunnydale? Perish forbid! Why, we're Bedford Falls without the snow!

*

TOM: "That his return would not go unwatched for the..." Dear GOD! It's Syntax of DEATH!

*

"...at LaGuardia we'll switch to an Air France flight to Paris, then finally change planes a third time at Paris for Nice. Any questions?" Giles concluded.

CROW: Where is Joe Merchant?
TOM: Who is killing the great chefs of Europe?
MIKE: Jar Jar Binks: What's that about?

*

"Why would someone think Willow is the Slayer?" Xander began "Because I was yelling all over the place last night after the attack. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid."

ALL: Shame...shame...eternal shame.

*

"O.K. So assuming that Willow was grabbed by mistake. Who would want to kidnap the Slayer?" Ms. Calendar put forward.

MIKE: Go to the Sarah Michelle Gellar Fan Pages and start with "A".

*

[Giles] "My word!"

MIKE: Jeepers!
CROW: Golly!
TOM: Holy friggin' crap!

*

TOM: But Police Officer divided by Principal and Multiplied by Ice Cream Man equals Delicious!

*

CROW: Hey, guys. Wanna read a fanfic?
TOM: Yeah, because we _never_ do that.
MIKE: What's the story?
CROW: Well, it's a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dead Man on Campus, American Pie, My Stepmother Is An Alien, Free Spirit, and an episode of Touched By An Angel.
MIKE: Uh...huh. Crow, I know the answer to this question will only make me unhappy, but what exactly is the common thread in all of that?

*

"Wait here." Buffy said, "I'll get us a cab." Giles would have protested, but she was gone before her words could work their way through his sleep-deprived brain.

MIKE: [Giles] If only I had some delicious Maxwell House!

*

Xander scooped Willow up into a big bear hug, which she enjoyed immensely. Giles tried to handle the reunion with typical English reserve, but Willow was having none of that and gave the librarian a big hug.

TOM: The sudden physical contact caused the librarian to retreat into an autistic coma. Sad, really.

*

MIKE: Xander, a paddle and a tub of pudding...
TOM: Crow's brain is a scary place, isn't it?
MIKE: It's a bad place full of bad things.
CROW: Ah, bite me.

*

MIKE: He would have laughed maniacally, but his throat was a bit sore, so he had some lemon tea instead.
CROW: "Femme-ulon, Demon of Anal Retentivity!"

*

CROW: Meanwhile, in the corner, Xander amuses himself with a piece of string.

posted 12.30.2001 @ 4:54pm -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

Hey, it's another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody.

posted 12.29.2001 @ 10:54pm -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

"The intimate justice that enables us to write a fluid, beautiful page, that true reformation that enables us to make our dead sensibility come alive--these things are the truth, our truth, the only truth. The rest of what there is in the world is landscape, frames that bind up our sensations like books, bound copies of what we think. And that's what it is, be it the colored landscape of things and beings--the fields, the houses, the posters, the suits--be it the colorless landscape of monotonous souls, rising to the surface for a moment in old words and worn-out gestures, sinking again to the bottom in the fundamental stupidity of human expression."

posted 12.29.2001 @ 9:36pm -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

I've been saving this for a few days, because it's a long read, but therealjae, whose West Wing stories I've adored from afar, has an interesting essay about story-writing in her livejournal, followed by forty-seven comments to date, most of which appear to be from other blindingly intelligent West Wing-ed writers. I tried to categorize myself using the concepts of "top-down" and "bottom-up" writing; in the first, one conceptualizes a story or universe in full detail, possibly with outlines and character bios, and then fleshes it out in a thorough and godly way. In the second, one starts with an opening line, a snatch of dialogue, a budding idea, a scene, and then grows this into a big leafy story--or a stunted bonsai vignette. I'd have to classify my style of writing as the latter. I have never made a story outline in my life, and my ability to plot sucks. In the last big story I worked on, I was able to scout the horizon and orient myself with some idea of where I wanted to go. I jotted a lot of lines at the document's hem, about what scenes to write next. But I hadn't plotted out an arc that would span point A to point Z, the bridge that should have taken me to some fixed point of arrival across the river. I was merely building an ad hoc pier, with scenes like stepping stones that zig-zagged across the water and ended up going nowhere, and so the river ended up sweeping away my story. Despite not creating outlines, there have been times when I felt I had successfully wrestled plot to the ground and triumphed. (Yes, we're leaving that bridge metaphor behind.) For instance, when writing Stargate I was constantly buzzing with joy--suddenly, I could plot! Plot was happening! Something about that universe, perhaps--its premise, its episodic structure, its formula if you want to call it that--worked for me in a way that other fandoms hadn't. My impetus to write in SG has limped to a halt, or at least a long rest, but it was great while it lasted. I wrote exactly what I wanted to write, and at the same time wrote exactly what needed to be written, as if the Platonic ideal of each story was itself driving the creative process. As a reader, I tend to notice and admire (and get wildly jealous of) the things I can't do well myself. I feel I'm weak in plot, so deft complex plotting blows me away. I feel I'm a mushy romantic, so bleak and gritty authenticity breeds green envy. I couldn't fill in the blanks of a West Wing story with any kind of plausible political knowledge, so reading canonically mimetic stories in that fandom impresses the hell out of me. And so on. And on a more basic level, whenever I read a story and end on the realization that I could never have written that uniquely brilliant combination of language, plot, and characterization to save my life--I have a little freak-out. I never really get that feeling when reading pro novels; it has something to do with self-comparison in the particular, delineated genre one works in--in this case, fan fiction. Hmm. And I think it happens most often when I'm not writing, which explains a lot. It certainly explains why I'm talking about this subject now, why I've hijacked my own post about writing styles and turned it into bitter mutterings on the theme of envy. Ah, I'm so predictable. I'm just in a hole right now, lying on my back in the dirt, looking up at the bright and distant stars. I should just write, one should always be able to just write. Right? But while some people's brains are an Australian breeding ground for plot bunnies, my own is this vast, empty plain on which maybe if you squint you can see one nervous prairie dog skittering away. Theories: I'm really a poet at heart, and fiction is an uphill slog. Or: I really long to be writing professionally but can't admit it, can't let go of my slacker underachiever-hood, and can't even write slacker underachieving fan-fiction stories anymore because my volition is all bollixed up. Or, I drink too much, exercise too little, and my brain is slowly turning into a thick tasteless porridge in which the thoughts and words and ideas I once had have sunk to the bottom, unreachable by the great authorial spoon. Or I'm just fucking lazy and psychologically constipated and would rather talk about my inability to write than write itself. We have without a doubt reached the last station on this train of thought.

posted 12.29.2001 @ 2:57pm -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

He saluted and walked off jauntily, leaving Buffy smiling.

posted 12.28.2001 @ 7:17pm -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

I'm a romantic writer, but a realist reader. At least, today.

posted 12.28.2001 @ 12:19am -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

And he looked back at her, almost awed. That look melted her, but she didn't have time to melt.

posted 12.26.2001 @ 10:40am -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link

Pancakes! {Anna is being struck on the head by a falling thought.} I should have bought some chocolate chips and whipped cream, and had Christmas pancakes...wonder if the convenience store carries Nestles chips. Hmm.

posted 12.25.2001 @ 11:16am -- right-click here to copy and paste a permanent link