Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no answers

[snick_backup]

The converse, however, is also true.

I enjoy doing this meme now and again. Old friends and new friends alike, ask me something - about fandom or writing or TV or, hey, even RL - and I shall answer.

Comments

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

What is it exactly that you do and how did you get into it? I know it's something academic, and I'm asking as someone who has major anxiety about getting into grad school and loves to compound it by harassing people about their academic paths.

[snickfic]

At the moment, what I do is teach math at a community college. However, it's been a long, circuitous route to get here. I got a math degree in college because I liked math, and then I went directly to grad school because I couldn't think of anything else to do. (This is not necessarily a great reason to go to grad school.) Alas, I was sort of burned out on math by that point, and my grad program was not real great. Most of the teachers cared a lot more about their research than about teaching, and even the ones that cared were mostly not very good. By the time I got out, I was even more burned out on math and still had no idea what to do with my degree.

Cue a year and a half of unemployment and me living first with my mom and then with my dad. (This is also the period when I finished watching BtVS for the first time and started writing fic.)

I got an offer to teach 6th grade in Honduras. I went. I made great friends with the Americans I lived with (including ex-Housemate) and I liked living in another country, but the school itself was a miserable, awful experience the like of which I hope never to repeat.

So I'm back in the States, I still have a math degree, I still don't have any great ideas, but my best friend in grad school is teaching math at a community college, and I say, okay, I can try that. So I move in with NuRoommate in Big City and I apply to local community colleges, and lo! There is a big demand for teachers at community colleges because due to the economy, enrollment is increasing every term.

I always said teaching was going to be a last resort, because I thought there were lots of other interesting things to do with a math degree, but I never managed to find any. (This is partly due to the economy, I think.) However, it turns out that I enjoy teaching quite a bit and I love the department I'm with, so it all works out rather nicely, actually.

I suspect that won't be all that helpful to you, though. Sorry. I certainly didn't have a plan while I was in school, and I pretty much stumbled into what I'm doing now. But I totally sympathize with all the frustrations and anxiety. I've been there a lot of different times.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

When and how did you start loving Dawn? Just tell me the story of your ~love affair~ with Dawn Summers.

Also--what book have you read the most times?

[snickfic]

According to the watch log, I liked Dawn almost from the get-go. She definitely had her whiny moments early in S5 (although it was Buffy whining back at her that really got on my nerves), but by the middle of the season I enjoyed her well enough and was attached enough to the idea of her character - but the sheer chutzpah of a character suddenly appearing with an entire backstory - that I really hoped we'd keep her. (I have a personal tic about metaphors/symbols/personifications that get to be characters for a little while and then are returned to the metaphorical/cultural soup from whence they came. I blame this tic on Orson Scott Card and his very irritating suburban fantasy Magic Street.) And we did!

Then, of course, the writers had basically no idea what to do with her forever after that. She isn't allowed (on either an in-show level or a writing level) to develop a social group of her own, so she's stuck on the Scooby fringes. Is it any wonder she complains about feeling left out? Yet she gets her moments of awesome, first in Bargaining and then frequently in S7. She's practically never important to the narrative except as a plot device, but she still gets to be fabulous, you know? She teaches herself ancient languages, she hands over her Potential dream without a qualm and guides Amanda through her first slaying, she knocks out Xander so she can go back and help with the apocalypse. She rocks.

And yet, I don't think I recognized all that the first time through. The one thing about Dawn that I knew I loved from the get-go was her friendship with Spike. You know. *g* (It's funny, because I came to love Dawn because I loved the Spike/Dawn friendship, whereas I came to love the Spike/Buffy ship because I loved Spike first.) So I read all the Spike/Dawn genfics I could get my hands on when I first got into fandom, and then I wrote Seraph, which really made the difference, I think. That made her concrete to me in a way she hadn't been before.

So, that was long and rambly. I hope you found the story of my ~love affair~ sufficiently tell-all. *g*

Oh, book. Um, probably one of the books I loved as a kid - I had a much higher capacity for rereading then. So maybe The Secret Garden or My Side of the Mountain, or one of the Narnia books - probably The Horse and His Boy, possibly The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or The Dawn Treader. Or maybe The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, which I just finished rereading for the umpteenth time. :)

[harsens-rob.livejournal.com]

I too love the Dawn/Spike relationship, especially in S5 ... which alas kind of dried up and blew away somewhere. I would absolutely love a Dawn/Spike roadtrip fic... maybe searching for a missing Buffy, but entirely focused on those two bickering and bonding with one another.

[snickfic]

I've read more than one Spike-and-Dawn roadtrip fic, but there can never be enough.

[harsens-rob.livejournal.com]

Can I make a request, rather than just ask a question? Well, I'm going to, because I'm a rebel that way in my own mind.

Anyway - please link to a crossover story in which BTVS is crossed with something that should not in a million years work, but that you loved upon sampling it and now we should all know about it, so we can love it too.

[snickfic]

Ohboy. This is a classic: Buffy vs. the Count - BtVS/Sesame Street. It is, would you believe, a slightly angsty, slightly hopeful mid-S7 Spuffy-friendly character study of Buffy. Yes, really. And just as perfect as perfect can be.

[harsens-rob.livejournal.com]

*snicker* ... That was disturbingly cute.

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

What are your ~feelings~ on Buffy Summers? ALL OF THEM. Don't hold back!