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edenfallingSo a week or two ago Anna Metzger, a nice young vampire, decided I was going to tell her story, since my family bore strange resemblances to hers. (Yeah, yeah, this is a self-insert to insanely large degrees. Deal.) Here she tells a little about her human family. Loosely set in BtVS season 4, but no spoilers whatsoever.
ETA: The characterizations here may not completely match the ones in the main story, More or Less the Same, but they're close enough to be a useful glipse of Anna's human family.
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More or Less the Same: The Vampire and Her Family
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Dad collects books. Which, y'know, isn't something he seems terribly serious about -- that is, he doesn't go out hunting down rare first editions or anything -- but he buys at least one or two a month, and he never, ever gets rid of them. Every room in our house has at least one bookcase, even the bathrooms. Our basement might as well be a library. And there are still more in boxes that he hasn't gotten around to unpacking since our move to Sunnydale.
Bridget collects clothes. She's always out shopping, always looking for a new shirt or skirt or pair of pants. Her closet is stuffed so full I sometimes worry about the door, and laundry baskets cover her floor, filled haphazardly with clean and dirty and only-worn-once piles of fabric. I never figured out what in god's name she sees in that shit.
Mom collects worries and peeves. She worries about her children's grades, about our futures, about our love lives. She worries about Dad and his lack of ambition, about the way he hasn't published any papers in the last two years. She worries about our diets, about water purity, about air pollution, about anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. And she tends her peeves. She hates Dad's books. She hates Bridget's clothes. She hates medical insurance companies, tax forms, PTA meetings, car problems, litter that mysteriously appears in our hydrangea bushes, lime rings around shower drains, and so many more that I've given up on ever learning all of them.
When I was alive, I didn't think I collected anything. Oh, sure, I bought books -- but I threw them away, too. And I bought clothes, but my closet was never full. And I had worries and peeves, but I learned how to put them out of my mind. Which, y'know, always struck me as the sensible way to deal with stress and piles of stuff, but my family never paid attention when I told them. I used to wonder, sometimes, why I wasn't a collector too, why I didn't have a driving obsession.
Now I know what I collect. I collect people. I collect words. I can remember every single person I've killed, remember their gestures, the tricks of their voices. I remember them, and I capture them in nets of words every morning when I come home to the lair. Someday I may put my words to better use. I think I might trying writing, see if the undead can publish books.
After all, I may be a collector, but at least I can see. Let my family go on living with their useless piles of books and clothes and worries. I'm going to put my obsessions to work.
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Inspired by the 28 March 2004![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets word: collection
Back to More or Less the Same
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I didn't like this week's word much. I couldn't think of any Harry Potter application, I spent a couple minutes attempting a really bizarre Ranma 1/2 monologue in the style of the Arabian Nights, and finally I was reduced to this, which is really just a portrait of my own family. Well, okay, a drastically exaggerated and simplified portrait, but still. My dad really IS like that with books, my sister really does have baskets of clothes all over her room, and my mom really does collect peeves and worries, and refuses to let go of them.
That last, I blame entirely on my grandmother, and I really dislike since I've inherited it as well. Nature or nurture? I've no idea, and I don't care. I just wish the fussbudget tendency didn't pass down.
(You should all be glad I didn't go with my other idea, by the way, which was a kind of gruesome original short about a serial killer who collected a different body part from each victim. Narrated from her point of view, with loving descriptions of the way she sliced up and skinned the corpses. There are times I wish I could drag my imagination out into the open and punch it in the nose for inflicting certain ideas on me in such vivid detail.)
ETA: The characterizations here may not completely match the ones in the main story, More or Less the Same, but they're close enough to be a useful glipse of Anna's human family.
---------------------------------------------
More or Less the Same: The Vampire and Her Family
---------------------------------------------
Dad collects books. Which, y'know, isn't something he seems terribly serious about -- that is, he doesn't go out hunting down rare first editions or anything -- but he buys at least one or two a month, and he never, ever gets rid of them. Every room in our house has at least one bookcase, even the bathrooms. Our basement might as well be a library. And there are still more in boxes that he hasn't gotten around to unpacking since our move to Sunnydale.
Bridget collects clothes. She's always out shopping, always looking for a new shirt or skirt or pair of pants. Her closet is stuffed so full I sometimes worry about the door, and laundry baskets cover her floor, filled haphazardly with clean and dirty and only-worn-once piles of fabric. I never figured out what in god's name she sees in that shit.
Mom collects worries and peeves. She worries about her children's grades, about our futures, about our love lives. She worries about Dad and his lack of ambition, about the way he hasn't published any papers in the last two years. She worries about our diets, about water purity, about air pollution, about anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. And she tends her peeves. She hates Dad's books. She hates Bridget's clothes. She hates medical insurance companies, tax forms, PTA meetings, car problems, litter that mysteriously appears in our hydrangea bushes, lime rings around shower drains, and so many more that I've given up on ever learning all of them.
When I was alive, I didn't think I collected anything. Oh, sure, I bought books -- but I threw them away, too. And I bought clothes, but my closet was never full. And I had worries and peeves, but I learned how to put them out of my mind. Which, y'know, always struck me as the sensible way to deal with stress and piles of stuff, but my family never paid attention when I told them. I used to wonder, sometimes, why I wasn't a collector too, why I didn't have a driving obsession.
Now I know what I collect. I collect people. I collect words. I can remember every single person I've killed, remember their gestures, the tricks of their voices. I remember them, and I capture them in nets of words every morning when I come home to the lair. Someday I may put my words to better use. I think I might trying writing, see if the undead can publish books.
After all, I may be a collector, but at least I can see. Let my family go on living with their useless piles of books and clothes and worries. I'm going to put my obsessions to work.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 28 March 2004
15minuteficlets word: collectionBack to More or Less the Same
---------------------------------------------
I didn't like this week's word much. I couldn't think of any Harry Potter application, I spent a couple minutes attempting a really bizarre Ranma 1/2 monologue in the style of the Arabian Nights, and finally I was reduced to this, which is really just a portrait of my own family. Well, okay, a drastically exaggerated and simplified portrait, but still. My dad really IS like that with books, my sister really does have baskets of clothes all over her room, and my mom really does collect peeves and worries, and refuses to let go of them.
That last, I blame entirely on my grandmother, and I really dislike since I've inherited it as well. Nature or nurture? I've no idea, and I don't care. I just wish the fussbudget tendency didn't pass down.
(You should all be glad I didn't go with my other idea, by the way, which was a kind of gruesome original short about a serial killer who collected a different body part from each victim. Narrated from her point of view, with loving descriptions of the way she sliced up and skinned the corpses. There are times I wish I could drag my imagination out into the open and punch it in the nose for inflicting certain ideas on me in such vivid detail.)
