Remove ads

[Buffy/WoD] What is Normal?

Reader mode
Ellf said:
They viewed what Julia did to Buffy as akin to rape. Saying that Julia mind-whammied Buffy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Mmn. If you're going to make that argument, you're basically half a step away from condemning every Kindred with a Childe. And if you have that kinda issue, you should probably just stay away from the setting? I mean, this is not a happy world, and vampires are not generally speaking nice beings.

That's my position, anyway.

Edit: Generalized 'you', in case there's uncertainty.
 
Finagle007 said:
...Um, yeah? That's kind of what Kindred DO when they want to sire someone. Most of the time, anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Buffy went with Julia willingly. The turning wasn't consensual, but the leaving of the Asylum didn't require any form of mental magic.
esotericist said:
Mmn. If you're going to make that argument, you're basically half a step away from condemning every Kindred with a Childe. And if you have that kinda issue, you should probably just stay away from the setting? I mean, this is not a happy world, and vampires are not generally speaking nice beings.


That's my position, anyway.


Edit: Generalized 'you', in case there's uncertainty.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, they basically said they wanted to burn anyone not named "summers" or "Sam" to death because Buffy thinks of Julia in a relatively positive manner.

(That said, if Julia had lived, Buffy'd have some words for her, not all of them coherent.)
 
Last edited:
Finagle007 said:
...Um, yeah? That's kind of what Kindred DO when they want to sire someone. Most of the time, anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ellf said:
Buffy went with Julia willingly. The turning wasn't consensual, but the leaving of the Asylum didn't require any form of mental magic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm personally of the opinion informed consent for the Embrace is functionally impossible. Yeah, the Kindred can throw words at the potential Childe, but there's just such an immense gulf of nature of experience that someone can never really understand what they're getting into.

Even for people who've spent a lot of time working with this kind of fiction, thinking about the alternate states of being implied, the vast majority of us are really just playing word games with concept-placeholders.
 
Ellf said:
They viewed what Julia did to Buffy as akin to rape. Saying that Julia mind-whammied Buffy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Honestly, turning someone into a vampire without consent or even warning is a pretty shitty thing to do. However, A) telling someone before converting them breaks Vampire law and B) Julia was immediately executed for it, so holding onto a 'burning hatred' seems like a stupid waste of energy. She's been punished, she's gone, except for a few ghostly wisps in Buffy's head and that's no kind of life.

It's also far from the worst thing a vampire can do and still stay somewhat sympathetic.
 
Last edited:
Ah. Their problem was that they thought Buffy was 100% straight and thus Julia had to mind whammy her to get her to go with her rather than simply just have high seduction.

Edit: Also, I'm doing some cleanup of this last scene. Buffy should be a little more empathetic to Mercurio and something about Samantha.
 
Last edited:
Adding this between Buffy going out into the alley and onto main street. (Also changing the day before to include a "with Sam"):

God, Sammy… Her friend had to be so worried about her. Unless she never made it home last night, the same as Buffy. Except… Lindsey had seemed to be a reliable man. That Janus daughter bitch had better not have killed her, and if she went into the Asylum tonight, she'd demand answers. God, what would her parents say? How worried must they have been that she hadn't come out? Did she look different enough that if people were actively looking for her, they wouldn't find her? Captain Jack had mentioned something about a Masquerade. Would meeting with her parents break it? Would they try to lock her in the hospital again? She didn't want to get on the Jester's bad side unless she was going to slay him. She needed to be careful. Maybe an ally would be able to help her with her parents and Sammy. Maybe Lindsey, as he seemed to know Julia. Must tend to the Kine and water them. They grow up to be such wondrous food.

And changing the Mercurio hospital paragraph to the following:

Buffy grimaced. "All right fleet-footed thingy, what's the what?" She wanted to offer him a hospital, but she could just see the man saying something about needing to avoid them. Something within her told her that offering to call an ambulance or something wouldn't be a good idea, and she didn't want to deal with doctors in a hospital anyway. He probably needed the hospital, but given his wounds, it wasn't likely that a doctor would be able to help him more than he was already helping himself. Mercurio obviously wasn't normal. A normal person would be dead.

I'll edit them into the actual scene in a second.
 
Malk Buffy is indeed Malk. And Buffy. I'm sorry I don't have anything more cogent to offer, just wanted to quickly post before bed and say that I love seeing this back.
 
Ellf said:
Ah. Their problem was that they thought Buffy was 100% straight and thus Julia had to mind whammy her to get her to go with her rather than simply just have high seduction.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
She does come off like she's supernaturally boosted her social skills a bit.

Though, I'd mention the official comics as far as Buffy being 100% straight goes.
 
Julia didn't do anything to Buffy with Disciplines, but that didn't mean she didn't do anything to herself. Julia wanted Buffy, and from the moment she saw her, she knew that the Slayer was hers. As all things of beauty were. (Megalomania is a thing. Was a thing.)
 
Remove ads
Chapter 4 Begins.
  • Threadmarks
    • It occurred to Buffy, as she made her way down the street, that she should, perhaps, change her hair style. If she was to be stuck in Santa Monica, the place she disappeared from, and the police were any sort of competent, it was entirely possible that they might recognize her. That wouldn't be of the good at all. It was only too bad that Willow wasn't here to help her select a new hair style. She'd be able to pick out something that would work and frame her head well while giving her a look that'd be hard to identify her at first glance. It was only too bad that Willow was probably not real at all. Sunnydale, after all, had been simply a hallucination caused by the Slayer delusion… Except… The dream. Maybe there was more to it than she thought. Bored now. Need to find time to play with the puppy.

    Buffy shuddered. She wasn't sure if that voice came from her own memories of a delusion or if it was one of the other voices she'd been hearing, but the tone was all too familiar. She didn't want to deal with a vampire Willow, even if she now was a vampire herself. The idea of staking someone with the face of a friend had always frightened her, sometimes even more than the idea of becoming a vampire herself. She'd had to kill Angel once, and it had nearly destroyed her. If she'd had to do the same to Willow, Xander or Giles? It would have. Somehow in the back of her mind, she'd known she'd have to do something to Angel at some point, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with Angelus. No friends, no family, no hope… what's left?

    "Me." Buffy slipped into an alleyway on her way toward the beach, and she stepped out onto the street that ran right in front of the Asylum club. She heard the thrumming beat inside the club from where she stood in the street, and her hands curled into fists. Jeanette Voerman had a lot to answer for. The club owner probably knew what had happened with Sammy, and in all likelihood, it was probably the first place that anyone would look for her. Buffy looked around at the cars on the street nearby and grimaced. There. Her father's Toyota Matrix. Why the hell had he driven that thing to Santa Monica? Couldn't he have left the search up to the cops?

    Damn. She'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it, but for now, she had a job to do. A job, which unfortunately, did not put Jeanette Voerman within striking distance. After she'd retrieved the explosives for Mercurio, however, she'd make sure that her displeasure with the club's owner was felt. She didn't want to kill her, but Jeanette definitely deserved a hard punch across the jaw for what she did. Still. The job. Explosives. Astrolite. Space is dangerous. Explosive decompression is the scariest thing to think of.

    Following the street down, she came to the walkway that led to the Pier. The gate was closed and she could see police tape blocking off an alley just beyond the entrance. Oh. Right. A few people passing by mentioned something about hearing how the murdered person had been torn apart, and they looked like they'd been eaten somewhat. She remembered finding the body, and she couldn't really disagree. Dismemberment, and the wounds… And lack of blood. Maybe it had been a vampire, but what kind of vampire would blatantly break the Masquerade in that way? Another Sad Bat? Poor Sammy. She had been so distraught after seeing the body that Buffy couldn't help but agree to do whatever it was she wanted.

    And after the Light Daughter of Janus had shown up, Sammy wanted to go wherever the woman led. Buffy shook her head. There was more than one way that she could go to get to the beach. She didn't want to scale the locked fence, not with people probably watching. Santa Monica wasn't Sunnydale, and she doubted that it had any of the normal things she'd associated with her hallucinatory town. So instead, she made her way through the tunnel that led to the beach, only to be stopped by the approaching of a dark-skinned woman with strange looking eyes.

    "Up there, through that chainlink gate and up those stairs," the woman said, and Buffy narrowed her eyes. The woman felt a bit off. She was a vampire… of sorts. She didn't really feel all that strong.

    "Come again?" Buffy cocked her head. She was pretty sure that she knew what the woman was talking about, but she needed to be sure.

    "The men you're looking for. They're in the house up there," she said, and Buffy nodded.

    "Thanks, miss…" Buffy trailed off, but the woman snorted and backed away, clearly having done her part. Maybe the woman was a seer of sorts, and Buffy made her way toward the chain-link. Spread out too thin, she sees but she does not understand. She does not hear, does not taste.

    A group of other… of sorts vampires stood around a campfire, one of them shirtless, staring at the waves. Buffy looked up to the beach house and back to the man, grimacing. Mercurio had been a little light on the information about the people that had beaten him, left him for dead, but she couldn't really blame the guy with how he looked. Shoot. Maybe if she had a little bit more an idea of what was up there… The man. She'd talk to the shirtless guy. Somehow he still had a tan of sorts. Maybe he cheated and used spray tan or something.

    "Evening," Buffy said, approaching the decently attractive shirtless brunette. "I was hoping you could—"

    Buffy stepped backward when she saw the man drop into a defensive stance. His voice was tinged with an Australian accent. "Hey listen, I've told you people before, we're just here hanging out. We're not hunting or anything. Ask Julia at the Asylum, she'll vouch for us. There's no need to bother the weaklings."

    Buffy raised her hands in a placating manner, and she grimaced. Thin Bloods or not. Harbingers of the apocalypse or not. They were mine, and a good Imperator takes care of her subjects.

    "I'm not here to play bop the Thin Blood," Buffy said. "You haven't done anything wrong, right?"

    "Right," the man said. "It's just…"

    "I don't want to know, E." Buffy closed her held up hand. Where had that name come from? It seemed to be right, but she hadn't even heard it in a whisper. Still, he'd referenced Julia. Maybe she could get some more information about her sire out of him later if she offered to help him. Her voice softened. "Look… I just… I need some help. Some information about what's up there. Do you know how many guys there are?"

    "How did you…?" E trailed off, and Buffy just looked at him. "Right, never mind. Probably like Rosa. There's about five guys up there, but four of them are usually blitzed out of their mind. Except the black guy. He's usually the worst. Not that you should have trouble with him. Your type usually manages well enough when hunting us."

    Buffy nodded. "Thank you, E. So, they're just normal guys then, nothing wiggy about them?"

    "Wiggy? You Americans…" E shook his head. "They're human. Least as far as I can tell. Definitely not like you."

    Buffy smiled. He seeks answers in his lily.

    "Thank you again, E," Buffy said, and she started toward the chain link gate. She'd have to figure out how to repay the guy at some point. He'd had no reason to trust her other than her sire's name, but she hadn't even mentioned that. As such, she also had avoided mentioning the fact that the Jester Prince had decapitated her sire the previous evening. Sure, she probably would have wanted to throttle Julia, but if she'd survived, Buffy doubted that she'd have actually tried to kill the older vampire. Sure, becoming a vampire had long been one of her fears, but it was one she'd gotten to face toward the end of her Sophomore year. Her fears had adjusted since then.

    Besides, she was about eighty percent certain that she still retained something that resembled a soul, unlike the vampires that she'd encountered in the Sunnydale hallucination. This was a good thing, even if her morality was starting to change. Maybe it had something to do with the change in diet. Blood was necessary for life after all. She glanced to the top of the steps. These people would have plenty, if she needed it.

    Mercurio wanted these people to suffer for what he'd been through, but all she needed to do was get the explosives. If she managed to get back Mercurio's money in the process, that'd be great, but it wasn't completely necessary for this. All she needed was the explosives, and it didn't matter how she got them.

    Buffy climbed the steps, and she walked up toward the house. The beach house was in terrible state of repair, with odd stains covering the wooden walls. One of the windows was broken, the glass still littering the ground beneath it. Out front of the house, a shirtless white guy, likely one of the junkies, stood lighting a cigarette while holding a baseball bat. Buffy was fairly certain she could take him if need be, but he might make too much noise. So, instead, assuming she could keep it together long enough, she would channel her inner valley girl.

    Buffy sauntered up to the junkie. "Like, oh my God, is this the place where the stuff for the party can be gotten? I mean, I totally must have blanked and gotten lost. Do you know, is this where Dennis lives? And he likes to party, right?"

    "I like to party," said the junkie, whose name really wasn't all that important to Buffy at the moment. She smacked his hand away as he started to reach for her chest. She'd made sure to do it lightly, but she wanted to grab it and bury her fangs into it, draining the guy and…. Okay then. Step back a second. It wasn't worth it.

    "Like, eww…" Buffy scrunched up her nose. Darkness will claim him soon enough. "Is this Dennis's place or not?"

    "Fine, yeah… You can go in."

    "Thank you!" Buffy shook her head once she was past the big guy. She must have been starting to get hungry, as it had taken an act of self-control to not tear that guy's arm off and feast on his innards. Hopefully Dennis would be reasonable, and she'd be able to get the explosives easily.

    Buffy stepped inside, and she stepped through the house to a room she could see through the front window. Two people were inside, a sharply dressed black man, and a white guy in a hoodie. The sharply dressed guy had to be Dennis. But where's Mr. Wilson to rein in his menace?

    Both men noticed Buffy, but it was Dennis who approached her in a confident gait. "Now, what could a cutie like you want from a place like this?" Buffy got ready to open her mouth to speak, but Dennis held up a hand. Rude. "Nah, I'm speaking right now, girlie. You look good, but I just figure I should give you the warning first. Before we do business. Before any money changes hands at all, I need to tell you this. You need to hear it. If you try to cross me, I will fuck you. If you tell the cops about me, I will find you, and then I will fuck you. If you are a cop? I will fuck you and your whole family, including the squirrel in the front yard. Now that that's out of the way, what can I do for you?"

    "That's a lot of fucking," Buffy said, using his own word against him. "Is that the only way you get off? Because I mean, I could pretend to cross you and help you in that matter."

    "You a whore?"

    "Not exactly, no…" Buffy shook her head. "I'm here for the astrolite. You know, the explodey kind? Best kind of party."

    "You know, you're the second person to ask me about that shit tonight. Considering that's definitely not a popular item, I have to wonder why you thought I might have some." Dennis sneered, crossing his arms across his chest. Dennis the Menace explodes on his own.

    Buffy crossed her own arms. As much as she hadn't really wanted to walking in, it seemed like Mercurio might be getting some of his wish after all. "How about we do this the easy way, Dennis? Give it to me, and you'll walk out of here."

    "Little thing like you?" Dennis smirked. Oh, this guy had everything coming to him. He indirectly threatened her family, he threatened her, and he did something to poor Mercurio. "You're what, one hundred fifteen at most? Girlie, you have no idea what you're messing with. Load the boat and get it ready, boys! We're going shark fishing tonight!"

    Buffy slipped into an offensives stance, jumping forward at Dennis. Her fangs flared in the low light, but she didn't intend on drinking. Instead, she slammed a fist into the well-dressed man's chin, right under the jawline. She followed up with a shot to his neck, and then she heard a gunshot and she felt the bullet penetrate her from the back and out the front. That… felt odd and strangely wrong, but it didn't scare her so much as increase her rising anger. These people were scum. These people were trying to kill her. These people… They… They… They deserved everything and anything.

    Another bullet struck Buffy in the chest, and she could hear something from Dennis about finding her family. No. He wouldn't. Buffy's vision tinged red, as she wrapped her body around Dennis and drove her fangs into his neck. She drank deep and long. The man had threatened her family. He'd lost all rights. These junkies would follow him through anything. They'd follow him into the grave. As Dennis's last bit of vitae ended in her stomach, she snarled bestially. Great rage leads to great madness.

    She gave in. She would show these junkies just what they had unleashed.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Things are starting to wriggle loose. Not quite off the rails of canon yet, but we'll get there.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top