Which BtVS character are you? (or, "What am I, twelve?") - and a fic rec

[red_satin_doll]

I found this personality quiz i ozma914's LiveJournal.  


http://www.buddytv.com/personalityquiz/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-personalityquiz.aspx?quiz=40
I shoulda known.  Willow was the first character I actually identified with on the show. Well, her and the Invisible Girl hose name I have shamefully and ironically forgotten. ETA: Velvetwhip reminded me that her name is Marcie Ross.)  As it turns out, ozma914 s Tara.  Or was in '08.  I wonder if that makes him my soulmate? (Which might be complicated, as I am actually a lesbian but, unlike Willow, I can't do magic.) I'm kind of dying to see wh local_max urns out to be, just for fun.

Speaking o ozma914, I've got recs for three of his marvelous short btvs fanfics, out of many:
"She Would be Thirteen".  Superb. Xander, sometime post-Chosen, deals with one of the most difficult aspects of being a new Watcher. I'm trying to branch out a bit in my fanfic and meta reading because I'm pretty well burned-out on Spuffy fics for the moment, and it's a challenge to open myself up to understanding the boy a bit. This story is sad (angsty?) but not bathetic or sentimental; very true to canon characterization - I can imagine NB in this - which is one of my biggest criteria for fanfiction; and packed with layers of meaning and subtext in a very short pace of time. It reads somewhat like a prose poem; not a single wasted word here.

For something on the lighter side: Did you think that Joyce (the lovely Kristine Sutherland) was hideously underused on the show? Did you want to see more of life in Sunnydale from her perspective?  Or wish they had bothered to tackle some of the realities of being a single working mom?  I know I did.  "To Start the Day" s one of the few, and like "She Would be Thirteen", it's spare and lovely, humorous, very much true to character. There's just not enough Joycean fanfic, IMHO.  (See what I did there?)

And from "light" to damn downright cracky, his Dawn-centric fic "A (Somewhat Less Than) Forever Love" has one of my favorite Dawn/Spike reunions in fic, in two short lines of dialogue. Meanwhile, Dawn and Buffy deal with all of Buffy's past boyfriends. Xander, Willow, Giles and Faith make brief appearances.  Giles cleans his glasses. Xander (almost) drools. Faith wears leather. Dawn snarks and fumes; Buffy chooses her words poorly. Angel, Spike and Riley are pretty damn petty, just the way I like them.

Happy holidays, everyone - whatever you observe, if you observe anything at all.  Peace and blessings to all.

Comments

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Hi Willow! *waves*

:-)

Ah, more to read. Thanks to a timely visit to the local hospital i'm spending the holidays all alone so thanks a lot for the fic recs!

Also, i've done that quiz and - wonder over wonders - i'm Buffy. ;-)

Which makes us BFFs?!

Yay!

On a slightly related note: The year's over and the next year will start rather slow (working load related), if the past is any indication. So i hope i'll be around more often and able to chime in on such wonderful conversations like you + Max + Ever had on her journal just these last days.

All the best to you, girl-friend!

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

*waves back* It not only makes us BFF's it makes us metaphorical sisters! I've been thinking about that a bit lately. Tara was brought on to replace Willow as the "damsel in distress", the girl needing Buffy's protection, except that as Willow's lover she's one step removed from Buffy, so in reality Willow's role is replaced by Dawn. Hence, the two of them standing one each side of Buffy at the end of Chosen is fitting.

Any change you can copy the Buffy "button" over here? I don't know what it says.

Thanks to a timely visit to the local hospital i'm spending the holidays all alone so thanks a lot for the fic recs!

*frowny face* I'm sorry to hear that! No family to visit you? I hope it's nothing serious - or that can't be resolved in due time. In the US it has to be pretty serious anymore to actually keep you even one night, but I don't think you're in the US. Do get well very very soon. I've been dealing with a leg injury for over three weeks and pretty much-housebound, I even went to the emergency room one night but they released me soon after. Probably better that I'm at home.

(BTW - may I ask what country you're in/from? Based on your comments in the past I'm thinking Germany, but then sometimes I think Greece or Russia?)

i hope i'll be around more often and able to chime in on such wonderful conversations like you + Max + Ever had on her journal just these last days.

You've seen those comments? I was hoping you would join in! You and Max both posted some thoughts on my Anne and Dopplegangers meta that I really need to reply to even though they are weeks old. I sometimes wish my inbox showed the oldest comments first - I get stuck on the newest ones.

I'm hoping you'll have more meta at some point; that's my plan for the year, to write more here.

Do take care and be well!

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer Character Are You?

More on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Created by BuddyTV

I didn't stay overnight because i didn't want to be at the hospital on the holidays! I had a circulatory collapse (because of being overworked, i assume) and thus couldn't make the drive to my family today (some several hundred miles and no airport in sight).

So i'm sitting in front of my computer, tea at hand, some sweets and happily typing. :)

A leg injury for 3 weeks doesn't sound all that harmless to me! I hope you'll regain your health very soon (and yes, i think it is better to be home, too. For psychological reasons as well as health reasons...)

And of course you may ask where i'm from. :) Today i live in Westphalia, Germany, east of the Ruhr megaplex. I was born in the Rhineland, so i have a "natural" affinity to the French, but i literally lived all over Germany at some point in time, from Berlin to Bavaria (Barbaria).

I've written some things about my heritage here: http://norwie2010.livejournal.com/3504.html in response to a meme by ceciliaj.

haha, i'm sooo with you on the "must comment! Oh noes! It's been 5 weeks already!".

And i hope to engage more fully in January, and i have written a drabble but i don't feel it is finished (but Emmie has already read it) so i hope to finish this at least over the holidays. :)

I have some half formed thoughts about Willow, and Glory floating around my mind which i really want to formulate fully (because by formulating, they become substantial and something of their own, something with which i can engage and dispute, dissect and deconstruct).

All the best to you!

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

You're a natural-born leader who is never afraid to rush into a fight.

That sounds about right, sweetie! Do you think the rest of it is pretty accurate?

So i'm sitting in front of my computer, tea at hand, some sweets and happily typing. :)

Well that's MUCH better than the hospital! Tea and sweets and a little relaxation sounds like a bit of Heaven. Thank you for your good wishes on the leg, I do hope it heals. I am supposed to have an MRI on my lower back this week (I've had to wait for the state and the doctor to process the request - the state was faster than the doctor's office, actually.) the hospital confirmed I didn't have a fractured hip, so that's good! Acupuncture helps a lot as well. I haven't been this incapacitated since I had an attack of lupus in my twenties.



I have written a drabble but i don't feel it is finished

You have a drabble? And you're going to make us wait to see it? *le sigh* Don't keep me waiting too long, please! Emmie is one of my favorite Buffy fans, btw - She's told me she hopes to be able to update her Season 8 epic fic at some point (much better than Joss's version of course.)

have some half formed thoughts about Willow, and Glory floating around my mind which i really want to formulate fully (because by formulating, they become substantial and something of their own, something with which i can engage and dispute, dissect and deconstruct).

I know what you mean! I have ideas for tons of metas floating about in notes in about three notebooks. I've got some half-formed ideas about Anya myself -not in terms of capitalist ideology, but in terms of being the one demon or sometimes-supernatural character on the show at the end of the season who doesn't get to intergrate her human and demon sides, unlike Buffy, Faith and Willow. but these ideas are very vague in my head and will have to wait until I finish other meta.

thank you for the link to the meme! I've printed it out to read this evening - bedtime reading. I still find it difficult to read longer stories, essays etc on the computer. My eyes, hands and brain still want to hold paper, and I can pick it up and put it down again. I don't abhor computers like Giles, obviously, but I still love the old fashioned printed page!

I thought you were from Germany although that was a rather glib assumption on my part, based on the fact that you are VERY aware of the evils of fascism and on-guard against it, in a "never forget, and never let it happen again" way.

You're also very well-versed in Communist theory, and as I recall from my studies on college (I wrote a paper about the Nazi takeover of the German film industry), the fascists and communists were enemies in the early days of the Reich. Who says history isn't fascinating? there's quite a lot more I need to learn.

(I've just read The Communist Manifesto and Engel's "Socialism". They are both very incisive analysts, although the flaws in their predictions are obvious today - and Engels is a good historian and a very amusing writer! I had not expected him to be so entertaining to read. Maybe now I can better respond to some of your comments on my metas, re: Joss and the working class?)

Enjoy your tea! :-)

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right, sweetie! Do you think the rest of it is pretty accurate?

Well, i don't think i have quite the same "bleeding tragic taste in (wo)men" as Buffy has, but my very first great love story was totally Buffy/Angel! A lot of treason, heartbreak and tears. Lots of ice cream was had. ;-)

But i lived, and learned and my relationships got better. :)

I also have a small group of very dear friends of whom i learned that some of them, despite being weird and sometimes having differing opinions, are truly loyal in the most dire situations. (OI also have a Spike-like friend who is constantly in deep trouble due to his personality and actions and i have to "save his life" constantly. It is quite hilarious - only in hindsight. Lots of hindsights. :D )

On the other hand, i don't think i was a natural born leader - i grew into being a "leader" or counselor more out of need. Sometimes, you get to the point where someone has to take action, or decision, or someone has to lend an ear even to the n-th lamentation of a friend who doesn't seem to learn from mistakes and nobody else wants to lend that ear or offer advice ("oh no, we've heard it all before! go away with your problems!").

And, during my very first engagement with an organized opponent, when the police closed in with tanks and anti riot equipment - i ran. It was a demonstration against police brutality, 3 days earlier the police had attacked a small group of young antifascists who then protected a refugee home from nazi attacks and then proceeded to hunt 24 year old Conny Wessmann, who, blinded by pepper spray, tried to flee and ran in front of a truck on a heavy traffic road. She died. The antifascists, who wiretapped the police radio communications brought the radio communication to light in which the police talked about "finishing off" the antifascists. It was, quite frankly, frightening. Here i was, 18 years old and thinking that this was a mistake, and that we would help clear things up by pressuring an official investigation and of course to publicly mourn our dead friend. But when the tanks rolled and the anti riot infantry stormed forward i had the distinct feeling "this is real. they hunted Conny until she was dead, and now they want to do to us the same. these people have no scruples and are driven by malice." (of course, it is a wee bit more complicated than this, but these were my thoughts.)

So, my very first "test" wasn't all that valiant. ;-)

But, as you may guess, it shaped me a great deal and helped form my determination and deep rooted convictions to never run again.

-----

Yes, i, too hope that Emmie will continue her wonderful "TYSK"! And i hope to read your thoughts on Anya, too! Anya provokes a great deal of thoughts in me but mostly, the discussions about Anya revolve around her "funny". So, write! :-)

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

I thought you were from Germany although that was a rather glib assumption on my part, based on the fact that you are VERY aware of the evils of fascism and on-guard against it, in a "never forget, and never let it happen again" way.

Believe me, it is not very German to stand against fascism. Granted, there are some Germans who actually learned something from history after all, but Germans are still deeply romanticists and thus unable to look into the mirror (or history). It is a great tragedy that the Germans today (including me) are the descendants of rapists and murderers who never really faced up. After the war, the western allies were too busy to transform Western Germany into the bulwark against the Soviet Union and thus the old Nazis were very useful and were put back into positions of power. Sure, the administrative and political order the allies imposed on Germany was meant to make sure fascism should never rear it's ugly head again (by excluding the people from influence and politics as well as a special brand of federalism in which a strong central state should be impossible to implement. Well - just look at the European Union today and see how well this turns out...

It is frustrating, sometimes. The German language lends itself so well to meaningful discussion of philosophical, societal and political ideas - but only a handful of Germans actually use it that way.

But, yes. As Bertholt Brecht said: "The womb it crawled from is still going strong" (which is an awful and wrong imagery and not very well translated at all) and that means to me, personally, that i have devoted my life to the cause of antifascism. It is so, well, near. The horrors, i mean. When i get into my car and drive a mere 25 km (16 miles) i stand on a mass grave of 65,000 murdered people. And, if you google for "concentration camp", or "death camp" the place doesn't even show up - because it is such a tiny, tiny drop in the ocean of blood in which all of Europe was nearly drowned. Over 1,000 concentration camps all over Europe, 13 to 17 million murdered (without the genocide which took place in Belorussia, Russia and the Ukraine, which did cost another 25 million lives).

The complete breakdown of any and all civilization, the total barbarism which took place here is simply horrifying. And my grandparents were the ones who did it. So, yes, i feel a very strong responsibility to stand guard and never forget (and never forgive).

"We will take up the fight until the last culprit stands before the judges of the people. Our watchword is the destruction of Nazism from its roots. Our goal is to build a new world of peace and freedom. This is our responsibility to our murdered friends and their relatives." Buchenwald Oath, 1945

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Who says history isn't fascinating? there's quite a lot more I need to learn.

Yes, the communists and anarchists were and are the eternal enemies of fascism. There's a truly great movie about this from Spain, a movie which explains this all very well and i'm pretty sure you would like this movie very well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarias

The movie follows some revolutionary women and their fight for equality and against fascism in revolutionary Spain in 1936.

So: Go, watch it! It is a great movie. :)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

That movie isn't available on netflix but it just might be at my local college library (we can have cards there as residents of the county), and they have a wide selection of foreign films so I just might be able to find it there. (that's how I discovered Carmen Maura's work, for instance. My sweetie and I fell in love with her at first sight in "How to Be a Woman and Not Die in the Attempt". Mature women onscreen - women over 30 - are so rare in American movies!)

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

(I've just read The Communist Manifesto and Engel's "Socialism". They are both very incisive analysts, although the flaws in their predictions are obvious today - and Engels is a good historian and a very amusing writer! I had not expected him to be so entertaining to read. Maybe now I can better respond to some of your comments on my metas, re: Joss and the working class?)

Well, the Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet to urge the European workers into unity and action. It is not a deep analysis but rather an inspirational speech, so to speak. :)

And yes, Engels is great! A deeply emphatic human being who truly wants his fellow humans to live in peace and happiness. He wrote at length about racism, gender inequality, history. He himself came from a position of utter privilege, being born into a wealthy entrepreneur family owning several factories. he himself never had to fight, or work but still he devoted his whole life to the finest cause of humanity:

"Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years,
never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the
finest cause in all the world - the fight for the Liberation of Mankind." Nikolai Ostrowski

While Marx is like the mind of socialism, Engels is the heart.

(Though Marx is amusing, too in a totally intellectual way: He wrote so sharp and scathing critiques of other philosophers and thinkers of his time and nobody ever got the better over him. Sharp, sharp mind and a very sarcastic humor.)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Well, the Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet to urge the European workers into unity and action. It is not a deep analysis but rather an inspirational speech, so to speak. :)

That makes sense. The anthology I have doesn't include "Das Kapital" (too long, perhaps?) and after Marx and Engels it has writings by Lenin, Mao, etc which I probably should read for my own edification, at least to try to grasp the justifications that politicians and despots give for their own actions. The chasm between what Marx and Engels intended, and what Lenin et al manifested, is enormous. (Which you well know.)

I could tell when Marx was was putting another theory - or theorist - in their place; or rather I couldn't at first, until I got used to his style (in TCM, which I know was co-written with Engels, but the tone of it's humor and critiques was quite different from Engels on his own - sharp, scathing and sarcastic are the perfect words for it.)

Engel's humor, even in his critiques, is warmer. I not only wanted to read more of Engel's work, I wanted to learn more about Saint-Simon, Owen; but most especially Fourier who I had never heard of before. To me that's one of the marks of good history/criticism, when an author makes me hungry to go deeper and read more. (Admittedly, there are huge gaps in my education/reading: philosophy generally, Hegel, et al; economics, psychology, politics etc that I'm not sure I could ever begin to fill up.)

I was extremely interested in the fact that TCM does at several points address the role of women in bourgeois society re: the hypocrisy of the bourgeois maintaining wives and mistresses for themselves; I had been given the impression reading Shulamith Firestone's "The Dialectic of Sex" in college that he did not.