commentary: "All Tweedy and Sarcastic"

[wisdomeagle]

queenzulu asked for a DVD commentary on All Tweedy and Sarcastic. Yay! I've never done one of these, and I'm really excited about it. :D


Summary: An early morning in the Magic Box when Giles doesn't have all the answers anymore.

Summaries are not my strong point, and I'm kind of proud of this one. Since 90% of my fic could be summarized "people talk about stuff and there's angst," coming up with better ways to phrase that makes me happy.

All Tweedy and Sarcastic
I don't remember when I came up with the title. It's a phrase that gets repeated a couple of times in the fic as a description of Giles. I'm still pleased with it; I think it's a good encapsulation of Willow's voice. I'm not entirely sure, though, if it really sums up the theme of the fic very well; the fic is about Willow, really, not Giles.

Tara woke up before Willow did that morning. She'd seen it. She'd sung it. She'd wear the t-shirt later; now she needed to be elsewhere. She'd talk to Willow later; she'd worry about Buffy later. Walking home from the Bronze last night, she'd been silent and Dawn had been jittery, still doing little pirouettes, and Willow had been talking. Tara loved the way Willow babbled when she was nervous; Tara loved everything about Willow. Listening to her chatter nervously was just making it harder. So she woke up and slipped out of the house early that morning, peeking in at Dawn to make sure she was okay, hurrying past Buffy’s room and trying not to think she's miserable.

This fic is set between OMWF and TR because it was the only point in canon I could think of when Tara would turn to Giles. My goal when I started was to write a Giles/Tara fic, and while the subtext in this is so thin that it's been recced at least one place as gen, I do think this scene needed to happen. In the opening paragraph, I'm establishing the temporal setting and Tara's emotional state. "Tara loved the way Willow babbled when she was nervous," etc, I think is a bit heavy-handed. It's probably not a good idea to state things like that explicitly.

She was going to the Magic Box, she realized once she was already on the streets, and that puzzled her and worried her. Magic had always been consolation, energies and spirits she could wrap herself in when she was scared and lonely. In magic she found courage, in magic she didn't need to talk, and she needed the magic. But not like Willow needed magic, not like Willow craved it. She couldn't begin to understand what Willow saw when she walked through the Magic Box. Tools? Temptations? Weapons? Did she see the way the charms harmonized, know how crystals felt when they were just properly attuned? Could she sense the richness of knowledge that permeated the shop? Did she smell the power, richer than incense and perfume? She'd always assumed that Willow came here and felt like she did, sensed what she sensed. She'd always assumed that she could understand Willow, that Willow understood her.

Tara's identity has been wrapped up in Willow for so long, she's worried that Willow's abuse of magic somehow means that she's also an addict. Understanding is another theme here; part of what went wrong was Tara's assumption that Willow saw the world (especially magic) exactly as she did. I think that's one of the problems when a relationship is based so much on sameness, on melding together just right. When differences do arise, you don't know how to deal with that. Not that, you know, that's ever happened to me.

She'd been blind. She knew she'd been blind, and now she was scared, and was looking back on two years. She'd seen Willow and had--she hadn't known how to begin. She'd been nervous and jumpy when she talked to her, and Willow'd calmed her, made her look around and see that the world was full of--of excitement, of wonder, of intensity and joy. She'd been so scared, and Willow had made her calm again. She was still scared, but nothing could calm her. The feel of magic on her fingertips was dirty, a naughty secret, something that needed to be washed away in a flood of... of sanity. Of cleansing magic, she wanted to say, but the word magic made her think of Willow saying, "A spell, we'll do a spell! I know one that's so easy, and so much fun, really, nothing to worry about." Willow used to be such a worrier, and it was calming, having someone who was more frightened about the future than she was.

A flashback! This is one of my very earliest fics; I'm spelling out a lot of stuff I'd leave to the subtext now. This is probably also one of my first attempts to tackle the Willow/Tara relationship, so Tara's thinking through the whole thing. Tara here is struggling with the fact that she can no longer let Willow be the dominant one in the relationship. The magic=sex metaphor resurfaces here, but now magic is a dirty secret, not an innocent sexuality.

The Magic Box was always full of good energies; Anya and Giles were good people, and they'd all done good work there, filled the shop with their concern and their protection. This morning, she had to let herself in with her own key, which she found strange and disconcerting, but it still felt like protectiveness, and Willow's energy was so potent here, she could actually feel herself collapsing under the pressure of Willow's magicks, her weight, her touches, everything.

Magic gives me problems. It must be tough for Tara if merely being the same place Willow once was makes her go weak-kneed. Another sex metaphor. Because you can't have too many. The beginning of this paragraph establishes how Tara feels about Giles (and Anya), and they're secondary to Willow -- she likes them, but hasn't actually thought about them.

It was the scary, queasy feeling of falling in love for the first time, and she could feel it every time she saw Willow, every time she fell asleep, every time she woke up, but she was giving it up, because she knew she wasn't supposed to feel that clench of fear that Willow wouldn't go to sleep, that Willow would stay up all night, cackling with power, changing them, changing her, changing the world, making it more Willow-like. What would tomorrow bring, what consequences, what spells? She didn't used to think of the world in terms of spells. And she didn't used to think of the world in terms of Willow.

I think that more than the spells, the alone-ness frightens Tara. She wants Willow to crawl into bed with her, not stay up late doing her own thing. Another real life thing -- I'm always up late and sometimes worry about that, wonder if I should just crawl into bed and share that falling-asleep moment.

She sat at the round table, no books on it this morning, nothing but a sheaf of homework that someone had left; she checked--incomprehensible equations meant Willow; she could still understand what Dawn was doing at school. She grit her teeth. She could still understand Dawn, period, and she didn't understand Willow.

I like reminding myself that they do still go to school, that they have lives that aren't related to the Scooby gang. I think the metaphor here is a bit heavy-handed. Now, I'd probably try to let it speak for itself

"Tara."

Only one person said her name like that

I wish there were some way I could evoke the way Giles pronounces Tara's name! That's pretty much all that's going on here, reminding the reader that Giles has a sexy, sexy British accent.

(and it wasn't Willow, who could say it a thousand ways, all sexy and demanding, and then all pleading and lost, and then, so angry, and defensive, and she knew, even in the midst of the swirly thought confusion that Willow had made, that mostly now Willow was just angry).

Writing people with memory spells on them is hard.

"Tara."

"Oh, sorry Giles. I'm distracted this morning."

"Because you're leaving," he said, not really fishing for the truth, she thought, just--curious. Concerned, maybe.

Because Tara can read Giles's mind

"The song. We sang about it," and how weird that was, "about leaving."

Giles nodded. "Will you leave?"

"Well, I won't leave town, if that's what you mean. I mean, I can't. I've got school, and Dawn needs me," us "and there's really nowhere else for me to go."

Lots of interjections of Tara's thoughts here. I hope it's clear what's going on

"Of course. But you're, er..."

Giles doesn't want to say "breaking up." So gauche

"Yeah."

She'd never really gotten it, Willow's whole Giles thing. Willow said (oh so long ago, when there was no reason to doubt Willow’s word) that Giles made her feel "important in a really unimportant way." She remembered it, because it had been the first time Willow had stayed the whole night and told her all about all her friends. They hadn't actually been dating-dating, then; they hadn't had that whole non-discussion followed by that very real kiss. They'd just done some spells, spent a lot of hours together, and Willow had told her about her ex-boyfriend and about Xander and about Giles. She said their names reverently, and she'd never dreamed that Willow could ever say her name like that--but she would, later. But she'd said Giles filled the space around him with this really sexy British-ness, that everything became "all tweedy and sarcastic. But then he looks at you, really looks, and you feel safe, even safer than when Buffy's watching your back. I don't know how he does it, Tara."

Aaaand we're back in another flashback! Rereading it, it feels really awkwardly phrased. Willow's crush on Giles is important to me, and I wanted to establish that Tara knew about it, and I love the idea of Willow telling Tara all about it during their sleepovers during S4. My problem with writing W/T is that since we don't have a lot of the turning points in canon, I have to make them up and convey them to the reader without losing the thread of conversation.

"Tara?"

Oops. Tara lost the thread of conversation. He repeats the last word from Willow's past-dialogue to call Tara back to the present

She shook her head. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"None of my business, of course," he said with a shrug that was almost inviting, in a really non-intrusive way. Tweedy and sarcastic, huh? What were you thinking, love? She grabbed the nearest book she could find, started reading it, prayers she'd learned as a child, prayers comfortable as her mother's skirts.

That's a really talkative shrug, right there. Tara's projecting a lot, I suppose -- she really wants to talk to Giles, or she wouldn't be here.

Finally Tara said, "Willow's doing too much magic," in the quietest voice that would still be audible. She'd said it to Willow, but she couldn't imagine saying it to anyone else. It was like telling people what you did in bed--breaking an oath. It was like Anya, telling the world that Xander sometimes wore women's lingerie, and oh how she hadn't wanted to know that. "I'm leaving her because she's doing too much magic."

Again with the magic=sex! I went with quiet understatement here... I think revelations of things the audience already knows are best done quietly, without lots of additional information. I like this moment a lot (though I'm not sure how much the Xander/Anya stuff fits in.)

Giles looked at her, eyes hard. "Willow's always been careless about magic."

Writing the dialogue here was so much fun. I love writing subtext.

"She doesn't--she doesn't understand people's energy, or the connections, or anything. She doesn't pray."

"Willow didn't have a classical training. I wasn't qualified to give her that."

"You're defending her."

Giles sighed. "I'm defending myself, Tara. I feel responsible. And yet--there's nothing I could have done. Willow has refused guidance and caution time and time again."

He's LYING! He so could have helped her. *frowns* But I think he knows that.

"Should I--should I leave? Could I do something? Could I make her better?"

"It's your--Willow is your--" he coughed, "lover. Your choice must be your own." He glanced at her, caught her eye, and said, "You must do what you must. That's what you sang."

And now it's a songfic! I love Giles' cough here.

Tara was sure she must be hallucinating in the glaze of too-early and the weightiness of Willow, but she thought Giles sounded slightly--bitter.

Too-early makes me hallucinate, too. And she's not just hearing things -- Giles really is bitter. I should really watch myself and the psychic characters

So instead of asking, "What would you do?" which was on the tip of her tongue, she asked, The implication being that Tara's wondering what it would be like if he were Willow's lover. "Have you ever loved someone so much that you couldn't bear the thought of them ever doing anything bad? So much you thought they could do no wrong, so much it hurt you?" She'd never said so many words to Giles before, but they'd sung a duet the day before--his last patented Sunnydale bonding experience, she thought. I think this is going to become a cliche in Giles/Tara fic -- her never having talked to him EVER omg.

"Yes. Yes, I have," he said, but he said it so quietly Tara had to strain to catch it.

Oh, the SUBTEXT! I think he's probably talking about Ethan here.

"What did you do?" When he didn't respond, she added, flustered, "No, that's not fair. It’s none of my business." I think I accidentally changed tense here. It just sounds like it would read better in the present tense

"On the contrary," he said, cleaning his glasses, I know, I know. But he does it in canon, too!"I'm just absolutely certain that any advice I give you would be superfluous."

"But you're like, advice man. Willow said" she choked on the words, like Willow's name was a tongue forced down her throat, an unwelcome invasion, a tongue twitching in her brain and drawing jagged lines through all the words it didn't like "that you always give the best advice." More sexual imagery. I don't remember thinking of the memory spells in terms of rape when I was writing this, but evidentially I was.

"Be that as it may--or rather, that's all well and good--but Willow never paid my advice any heed."

Giles is still flustered over being reminded of his past, and I think he's also uncomfortable about the reminder of Willow's feelings for him

"But it was all good advice, anyhow."

She tried to read her book. The names of all the gods and goddesses were starting to blur in her head. She'd asked her mother if they were real or just fairy tales, and her mother had sat and listened to her heartbeat and said that magic was real and that was all she needed to know. Willow didn't believe in anything, didn't need to when she had all the power she needed resting just beneath her fingertips. The invocations were tools, were computer coding, and now she'd tapped into the source and didn't need gods anymore; she was interfacing with the motherboard. Not in a good, connect-y way, either. In a scary and cold way.

This mostly arose organically; I needed Tara to be doing something since conversation wasn't happening, so she started reading a book I was sure would be around the Magic Box. I love the image here, too. I'm fascinated by the difference between Tara's and Willow's approaches to magic

"Do you believe in gods?" she asked.

I love this question, and wish I knew what Giles's answer was! I reference this conversation later in Prayers, because I'm so convinced this conversation actually happened.

Giles didn't answer, just stared at her for a long time, like the question was the key to her insides. She felt uncomfortable, and she realized there were lots of different kinds of discomfort. There was discomfort like Willow keeping secrets, snapping out of their shared space when they were doing a spell, laughing at naughty jokes and unable to keep the magic out of the bedroom, so that she reeked of spells even when they were making love. And there was discomfort like not knowing how to look at Buffy when you knew that it was your fault that she was seeing everything through funhouse mirrors. I like that image, still. And then there was the discomfort of having Giles look at her thoughtfully, and knowing that his voice could rip out her insides, and feeling that he was hurting every way from Tuesday, "Dawn's in danger. Must be Tuesday." disappointed and lonely and bitter and afraid he was making a mistake, and that was the kind of discomfort that made her feel better, almost.

More of Willow's badness being made sexual. I hadn't realized the extent to which I'd done that. The description of Giles looking at her is exactly what I love most about age-difference and mentor-kink. It's also supposed to be vaguely sexual, in its intimacy and intensity

There was no better this year, only less worse. Buffy alive was less worse than Buffy dead, and Willow silent was less worse than Willow chattering and making her crazy in love all over instead of just plain crazy. I hope people were able to follow this. It didn't scan very well, but I liked it too much to change. Giles staring at her wasn't good, but it was less worse than having to look Willow in the eye, less worse than being scared of Giles, less worse than trying to tell him what was wrong and knowing he was full of sympathy and sadness but not advice, and that he had no way to make it better.

Tara hadn't known them when Giles was half of Willow's everything, when she'd written that essay for sophomore English about why her librarian was her hero, or when she'd stockpiled every "excused from class" note he'd written for her in an old shoebox, when Giles could do no wrong. Oh, I love the Willow/Giles-y bits! Pretty much Willow-Sue, here, but I don't put any of it past her. She'd never thought Giles could save the world, so it wasn't like she was dying of disappointment with him, which was good, because disappointment with Willow and with herself were taking up all available disappointment slots in her brain.

To me, "She'd never thought Giles could save the world" is the crux of the whole thing. I love Willow/Giles, but Tara/Giles was working for me here because Tara doesn't worship Giles the way Willow does, so she'll never have to face the same level of disillusionment

She didn't know how many minutes it had been since she'd spoken when he said, "I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. There won't be any--no scenes, no little rubber monsters this time." I love that scene.

"I'll miss you," she said, and longed to give him something that would prove it was true. This might be more shippy than I really needed to go, but it's still pretty vague.

He nodded, and she felt the glitter-glaze of morning erupt in her brain. It was surreal: the company, the shop, the energy, the realization that neither of them was going to be here next week, maybe not even tomorrow, and there was lightning somewhere; she wasn't sure if it was real or just (another) product of seeing the world through magic-colored glasses. I love writing insomnia and sleep deprivation, since I spend most of my life in that glitter-glaze of morning. Tara probably gets a full eight hours of sleep every night, but I figure she didn't get a lot of sleep the night before...

"You requested my advice?" he asked, finally, like she'd just walked in and he was a guidance counselor or something, like he actually had good advice to dispense and not just "get out of this town, Miss Maclay. Get out at all costs," like back in high school. No, Giles asked if she wanted his advice, and she said sure.

"Advice from someone who's been an old fool since the minute he gave up being a young fool?"

I think Giles is especially self-deprecating this morning because he's feeling guilty about having to leave Buffy

She didn't know if he was fishing for a compliment or if he was fishing for confirmation of his foolhardiness, so she said nothing and nodded.

"You're far too good a woman for her," he said, and closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

I don't think Giles would say this, normally, but now he's thinking about Ethan and worrying about Tara and hoping he can save her and force her to do what he thinks is best so she won't get corrupted the way he was.

She wanted to swim in that thought for awhile, try to figure it out, try to figure him out, like he was a person, a man who sang low, sweet love songs to his not-quite-daughter, a man who wiped his glasses too much and knew everything in every volume in this bookshop.

Since this is post-OMWF, I've put in lots of references to it... I think the two of them singing together made them think about each other more than they ever had before.

She thought she finally knew what the library must've felt like. Willow said musty and modern and comforting and scary all at once, and like it was new for all of them, but at the same time like they'd been doing it all their lives, and Giles was like the hippest teacher in the history of the world and also "oldy moldy and kinda dull, you know?"

She imagined someone like Giles teaching magic, out of books and failed Watchers' Council experiments and a troubled youth of hashish and fresh-brewed aphrodisiacs. No voice saying "Tara, be careful," no one to tell her how to talk to trees and understand the language of herbs. If I grew up in a library, would I be raising the dead and casting forgetting spells?

I love the idea of Willow growing up in the library, and I also like Tara trying to figure out what it must have been like. It's part of that understanding thing, and the way Tara will never really understand Willow because she wasn't there.

If Tara could've sat there forever, trying to say goodbye to Giles, trying to figure out what made her a good witch and Willow a bad witch, what made Giles Giles and not her mother and not Spike, I was obsessed at the moment with the idea that Spike was a shadow double for Giles if she could've had an hour to feel the not-enough sleep fuel her thoughts, she could figure it out. Because not-enough-sleep was about what I had when I was writing this Figure out why Willow had never listened to Giles when he warned her, what it was that Willow had to prove, why Willow didn't trust her anymore, what she was afraid of. She would have understood love and magic and learning and yesteryear and how she could go on living with Willow without making a fool out of herself.

But her train of thought was broken when Buffy came in, fake-bouncing in a way that Tara had never seen before, S6 Buffy is a tough nut to crack. I imagine her putting on a happy face and pretending desperately hard like she knew what the day would bring and was desperate to avoid it, to avert it. She wondered if Willow's eyes would look like that when she told her she knew about Lethe's Bramble, that it was too late--that it was over. Buffy's greeting was subdued, and Tara felt her eyes start to prickle when Giles told her to come back, that they'd spend the day in training, when he waved her aside with the hand that wasn't on Buffy's shoulder. I was really torn with this sentence, and now I can't remember if I meant for Giles to be telling Buffy to come into the back room for training or telling Tara to come back later. This moment, where Giles turns Tara away in favor of Buffy, is really coming back to the idea that for better or worse, Tara and Giles have loyalties to Willow and Buffy, respectively, and even though they might be good for each other, they're never going to explore that, because the others come first

"B--bye, Giles. Bye Buffy. I'll see you later. Later."

And that's all! It's not the strongest ending, but I like the repetition of the word "later." I'm still pleased with this; I had a lot to say about Willow and Tara and Giles. Plus, there's subtext!

Anyone want another commentary?

Comments

[zulu]

Awesome. It was the subtext that made me want a commentary of this one--I wanted to see what your thoughts were behind the words. These things are ridiculously fun--I've already started another, longer one. I may take another gander at your memories and ask for more.

[wisdomeagle]

*g* Yay!

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

while the subtext in this is so thin that it's been recced at least one place as gen

and by "at least one place" we mean "Elizabeth's recs page" *feels cool*

I think the two of them singing together made them think about each other more than they ever had before.

Somehow that had never really occurred to me, even though seeing it written down it seems such an obvious jumping off point for interaction if not outright 'ship between them. *files away information for potential fic-writing later on*

Tara and Giles have loyalties to Willow and Buffy, respectively, and even though they might be good for each other, they're never going to explore that, because the others come first

Okay, that probably helps to explain why i hadn't thought about putting them together -- because each of them is so intensely connected to an other. (Or really "to others," because i think a large part of why my brain didn't go there is because my brain is so full of thinking of assorted other Tara pairings and Giles pairings where there is so much more obvious connection. Proof that i don't actually ship anything that moves.)

[wisdomeagle]

and by "at least one place" we mean "Elizabeth's recs page" *feels cool*
Well... yeah. :p

Proof that i don't actually ship anything that moves.

Aww. I don't either, not yet, but I'm working on fixing that. :p

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i'm clearly falling down on the job since i keep saying i ship everything that moves.

And dude, i heart knowing that at least one person reads or has at least at some point read, my recs page -- though i already knew that when you posted about reading "Anywhere But Here," but still.

*loves you*

[(Anonymous)]

I hadn't read this before, so let me say: well done. And I thought the flashback was perfectly well-handled.

Alixtii.

[wisdomeagle]

:) Thank you.