Jack

Over on Fandom Wank there's a whole to do about drabbles, which are apparently pieces of short fiction stories which must be exactly one hundred words. The write-up itself was a drabble, and many of the comments were in verse. I was therefore moved to post the following sonnet, which doubles as a drabble. As a result it's not the best sonnet (which is perhaps why no one has commented on it), but I'm egotistical enough to post it for posterity here (all the more egotistical because no one but me and That Guy know that this damn journal exists).

Alice had posted a fanficrants page
For against her fic Snape fans were massing.
But a vile mistake was made in her rage:
She called her fic a drabble in passing.
Catchester was there to redress this wrong,
And recalled the word’s first definition;
Her smug icon told the ignorant throng
How pathetic was their erudition.
Could there be truth to the stone wolf’s reply
That our language must face evolution?
Or are those who let their pedantry lie
Just anarchists who seek revolution?
If in any way my words should fall short,
Then read the above awesome wank report.

(Confession time: I do not own the Angel or Stargate franchises. In fact, I only watched Angel sporadically after the third season, although I did watch SGA through it's entire run. This story picks up at the end of that show, and features Angel investigations as seen in late season 3/early season 4.)

Angel drove slowly alongside a cluster of warehouses near the oceanfront at San Pedro. His agency had been getting recent reports of port workers going missing, and coupled with the bizarre celestial phenomena that the radio had been reporting since sundown he believed there was a demonic ritual in the offing. He didn't know exactly who was behind it yet (Wesley thought it was the Khorei brotherhood, while Fred suspected Shollav demons), but he figured research had gotten them as far as it could. He and Gunn had split up to cover the area, ready to notify the others if they found anything unusual.

Of course, as was more usually the case, the unusual found them first.

The traffic reports on the radio were suddenly interrupted by a frantic announcer screaming that a meteor shower was heading for the greater LA region and that everyone should seek shelter immediately. Angel opened the door and looked up at the night sky. Sure enough, a number of bright spots were moving through the lower atmosphere, and growing steadily larger. In fact, one of them was growing uncomfortably large. Almost as if...

Angel lunged back into the car and stomped on the gas pedal. Over the roar of the engine, he heard a strange, irritatingly high pitched whine coming from the sky behind him. The sound oscillated for a few moments, then shuddered and died as a fiery object rushed from the sky and crashed into the building he had been parked in front of a few moments before.

The car screeched to a halt as Angel leaped out. He reached into the backseat and grabbed a broadsword (in case the demons he was looking for had accidentally called an air-strike down on themselves) and a heavy blanket (for any human occupants of the building). Then he turned, squared his shoulders, and bulled his way into the wreckage.

A quick look inside told him that no one had been doing any normal work inside the building: the office was dark, and the main floor had been cleared of freight, either in anticipation of new arrivals in the morning or because the owner didn't trust his wares not to wander off if left unattended. If so he would be right, Angel thought as he shied back from the heat of the burning wreckage now occupying the space, although probably not for the reason he thought.

Suddenly there was a loud hum, and light lanced out of a dark space at the heart of the inferno. As it swept past it left a trio of figures in its wake, who scrambled quickly back from the flames. Angel tensed and ducked behind a forklift as he saw them. Fred and Wesley were both wrong, he thought as the creatures collected themselves. These...these are something new.

All three of the creatures had long white hair and sickly gray-green skin. The two on either side were tall and burly, with brown and gnarled faces containing a mouth full of fangs. Angel noted they were wearing breastplates, and were carrying objects that he couldn't immediately identify. The middle figure was much more lightly built, and its face was entirely different than the others. The overall effect was that someone had crossed a man with one of those fish that hang off of sharks, then lent it Spike's wardrobe. All three seemed to exude a palpable air of malice.

Bad news, Angel thought. Either these things came from the meteor, or the meteor opened a gateway into a hell dimension and these things came through. Either way, I have to send word to the others. These things could be coming down all over the city. The only question was whether he should slip out before they noticed him, or take care of these three first and contact the others after him.

Suddenly one of the burly creatures threw up its head like a dog taking a scent, and he realized that the choice had been taken from him.

"Okay, you caught me," he said, stepping out into the open. "So is it time for the speech-making phase of your plan or-" He was interrupted as the first of the burly creatures lifted the object it was carrying, sending a pulse of blue energy towards Angel...which passed through him with absolutely no effect. Upon seeing the failure of whatever magic they were attempting to use, the second of the larger creatures leaped at him, covering the distance between them with astounding speed.

"Look pal, I understand that you're new in town, you want to hit the beaches-" Angel lunged forward, bringing up his sword in a lightning-fast strike that neatly severed the creature's head from its body. "But you've got to learn to pace yourself."

The other two creatures took Angel's advice to heart, approaching more slowly. The larger one began swinging and feinting with its weapon, and Angel realized that it had a blade attached to the handle behind the creature's hand. The smaller one was edging between Angel and the burning wreckage of the warehouse in an attempt to encircle him. Suddenly, although no apparent signal passed between them, they simultaneously rushed at him.

Angel feinted for the larger creature's head and then swung lower, putting all his vampiric strength and speed behind the blade. He took it in the waist, right below its breastplate, with enough force to cut it nearly in half. As his blade exited the creature's midsection, he used his backswing to bring himself around to face the other, and thrust his sword into its chest. The final demon staggered backwards, taking Angel's sword with it.

Now I have to call the others, Angel thought. I'll start with Gunn, and then get Wesley out here while Fred looks these things- he paused. Although it had taken a couple of seconds for him to reach for his phone, his final opponent had yet to fall over.

The creature stared at Angel for a long moment with baleful yellow eyes. Then it grabbed the sword's hilt and slowly drew it from its body, the blade slick with foul-smelling blue ichor. Once it was free of the sword, the creature arched its back and let loose a hissing sigh. From the wet sounds coming from its torso and the suddenly diminishing blood-smell, Angel realized that it was healing itself. Finally, it straightened back up, looked at him, and smiled.

"You are quite strong, for a human," it said in oddly doubled and oddly accented voice. It had a strange way of thrusting its head forward as it talked, its sneering smile just slightly off-center on its face. "Unfortunately, you have made two mistakes: You have left yourself unarmed and me," it flexed its empty hand, "with the desire to feed."

"Okay, you see," Angel said, "There's always a spee-" and then the creature was coming at him. Mindful of its intention to feed on him, Angel slammed his hand into its collarbone, keeping its jaws away from him and trying to get a grip on his neck. It seemed to be trying to push against his chest, either for leverage or to escape his grip...And then he noticed the second mouth on its hand, just seconds too late.

For an endless second the two of them stood in a rictus of agony; Angel as he felt the creature trying to tear away a life force he no longer possessed, his opponent as it finally encountered a hunger more ancient and terrible than its own. Then the moment passed, and the two of them slumped away from each other.

What was that? Angel thought, trying to get a grip on himself. He had no living blood for it to take, he didn't seem to be any weaker, his soul seemed intact...so why did he feel a strange, aching emptiness, as if something vitally important had been stolen from him?

The monster crouched only a few feet away, cradling its head and moaning incoherently. Before Angel could recover from his own shock, however, it suddenly straightened up. There was something different about it's posture, something at the same time more human and more recognizably bestial. It gave a terrifyingly familiar predatory grin and a slight, rolling stretch of its shoulders before saying, in suddenly fluent English, "Well boyo, this is an interesting situation, now isn't it?"

Angel felt a sickening shudder pass through him as he realized what, or perhaps who, had been taken from him.

John walked into the room, anger and embarrassment warring on his face. "David, we need to talk."

"What is it?" David asked, looking up from his laptop.

"I read what you posted online. I'm...I'm not sure we can be friends anymore."

David's face fell. "I'm sorry you feel that way John," he said, climbing slowly to his feet. A thought seemed to occur to him. "Are you sure there's nothing I can say to fix this? No way to remind you of the friendship we've shared?"

"I don't know," John said. He regarded David thoughtfully for a moment, then slowly began unbuttoning his shirt. "Maybe there is."

David took two steps towards John, then hesitated. "Perhaps I should call Billie and warn her about this row we're having."

"Come on David, this argument's between you and me. It would be wrong to drag other people into the middle of this."

"Of course, you're right," David said thoughtfully as he reached for the phone. "It would be very, very wrong..."

I have finally put comments on all the user icons I didn't make explaining their provenance. Or at least most of them, given that all I can say about "superstar" is that it came from some Buffy icon community. I think it was buffy_icons on LJ, but I can't be sure of that (much less which poster there made it) because all its posts from that time period have degraded into image-less blankness. But I guess it'll have to do.

Ironically, I finally got around to doing this only days before JF boots me down to free user status, cutting my icons by 66%. I guess you win some, you lose some.

In today's For Better or For Worse, Elizabeth tells Anthony that she loves him and that there will be "no more running away, no more searching." Several readers have voiced their displeasure about the thought that Liz's apparently fulfilling and independent career as a teacher in Mtigwaki is being portrayed as the rebellious meanderings of an immature little girl. I realize that I'm kind of late for the FOOB analysis bus, but I thought that I'd give it a go here nonetheless.

I actually think that Liz's whole "no more running away" schtick could have been effective, but only if most of the decisions made during her adult life had been portrayed as her shying away from committing to her true love Anthony. It's actually pretty clear that this is how Lynn Johnston views things; that Liz was too immature to stay with Anthony and so she latched onto Eric, and then upon learning that Mustache Man was engaged she fled to the Darkest North and "settled" for some native cop. Upon hearing that he was available again she returned, a wiser woman, finally ready to admit her feelings for Anthony and commit to them.

This could actually be a fine story, and works reasonably well up through Liz's graduation from college. Indeed, if Anthony's engagement fell through at that time and he and Liz got back together, my only real complaint would have been that it mirrored the Mike/Deanna storyline too closely. Well, that and the fact that Anthony still would've needed a personality. But had he been shown to have grown and developed during that time as well, it would have been okay.

For this to have worked after the graduation, however, several things would have to have been done differently. Firstly, Liz's sojourn in Mtigwaki would have to be less successful. Rather than being portrayed as having happily adapted to her rather rugged conditions, Liz would have to be shown as constantly struggling; or even as feeling empty in spite of her suspiciously exalted status within the community. This would portray her time in Mtigwaki as that of an adult honestly trying to find her way in the world but deciding that this particular life is not for her, rather than that of a foolish child having one last fling before settling down. Her decision to return home should have come after a long and explicitly shown period of soul searching, one completely unrelated to news of Anthony's divorce.

Speaking of which, the divorce is the second thing that would have to be overhauled. As it is Lynn tries to portray Anthony as a good husband desperately trying to hold his loveless marriage together. Again, this could have worked if he had honestly failed and then learned to love Liz some time after his wife had left. Instead, Anthony tries to bypass the second part entirely by never moving on from Liz, even (or especially) during his marriage. This doesn't sit well with readers in spite of Lynn trying to justify it by making his wife completely evil, and is the main source of complaints against Anthony (well, that and the mustache). We have a man who married at haste and repented at leisure, which the audience would understand if they were also shown a man who cared for his wife and only sought out another woman after their (mutual?) divorce, rather than an emotionally unfaithful cad who continued to court another woman but apparently couldn't stomach ending his loveless marriage.

The final change would have to be to Warren and Paul. In order to paint their relationships with Liz as immature, the two of them should have been heavily flawed characters in the same vein as Eric Chamberlain. As it is they are shown to be swell guys with whom Liz can have a healthy, mature relationship, and her relationship with Paul is consistently portrayed as being happy, almost idealized. Fans rightfully point out that Liz looks flighty at best for abandoning them to return to Anthony. Later strips and the bios do attempt to rectify this by turning Warren into an unavailable stalker (is that an oxymoron?) and making Paul naive and emotionally unfaithful (in other words, he's turned into Liz). Given their place in the story Lynn appears to be trying to tell, however, they should have been portrayed this way from the beginning; just as Liz's time and Mtigwaki and Anthony's marriage should have been portrayed differently. Trying to show them differently now is quickly recognized for what it is: a desperate retcon.

In short*, I can see the story that Lynn wanted to tell. It could be a good story, and in that story Liz's comments about running away would be totally appropriate. It's just too bad that we've never read it.



*Too late!

I felt that this journal ought to contain at least one entry, so here's my comment on the whole strikthrough fiasco. Crossposted from my livejournal.

( Major Pirates spoilers. )

This journal belongs to Captain Jack, at least until I get banned from LJ.