Vagrant Story - Go Wyverns

Afterword - Author's Commentary

I tried to make all the events seem more or less rational. Sometimes I failed. But the thing seems to hang together... if not well, at least decently. Writing the really mushy scenes was kind of disturbing, for me; they were really easy to write. Too easy. I'm really too old and cynical to believe the stuff I was typing, but I could say it anyway. But then, I knew how it was going to end, and that would make anybody cynical about the mush. Heh.

And it was terribly, terribly fangirlish; all the babble about clothing, all the flowery mush, all the soul-baring conversations, all the incredibly overly romantic settings... eheh. No, I'm not a cynical romantic at heart, or anything. Uh, okay, a cynical romantic with a real vicious streak.

Almost every person, place, and thing in this fic is taken directly from my own high school days in Texas, although the events are mostly fictional. With a few exceptions, here and there. The attitudes, the style, the focus on sports, all of that is pretty Texan as well. And SO eighties. The whole fic was ridiculously cathartic and nostalgic for me. 
That's my high school, my high school's drama club, and my high school's stadium. Ashley's apartment is the apartment that I lived in with my mom my senior year. Hardin's house is... uh... a really expensive restaurant in Houston. Even the damn Wendy's across the street is a fragment of my high school days, as is the exploded telephone nailed to Sydney's wall. Hell, this fic stars most of my own WARDROBE. I even own the fingerless black leather gloves!

I knew people like every single one of the characters, except Rosencrantz, who's a conglomeration of about three people painted heavily with fiction. Yes, I knew a Romeo, smug asshole, although as far as I know he never actually went berserk. I'm in the fic, too. Try and find me. Nyeh heh.

Boy, this thing really fucked with my mind, though. I don't know if I'll ever be able to produce anything quite like it ever again. I guess we'll see.
- Mooncalf

ASHLEY: Is not gay, no, but something about Sydney pushes all his buttons anyway, and pushes them hard. He fell for Sydney almost immediately, but he'd never have even known, except that Sydney kept managing to get under his skin. The whole point of Ashley, and therefore the whole point of his relationship with Sydney, was: It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Ashley acts before he thinks, and does what he thinks he's supposed to. Or what he's been steered into.

SYDNEY: Is a lot of fun to write dialogue for. He plays at being confident, but bad bullying has turned him into someone with very little real self-esteem; he insults himself constantly in order to do it first, before others can. He's also much less nice than he tries to be; I know that becomes a bit more obvious when he seduces Hardin, but trust me, he was being a totally manipulative brat all the way through the fic. Whether he knew it or not, he was steering Ashley all the time, subtly forcing him to say and do things that Ashley probably wouldn't have otherwise. The only saving grace was that Ashley didn't really mind being manipulated; Ashley was far too used to doing whatever 'seemed right'. Sydney was good at making things seem right. "Tell me you love me, Ash." is a line that bothers me, despite being at the end of Major Mush.

CALLO: Is pretty much every popular girl from my high school that wasn't Samantha. Fake, but very deeply fake; nice to everyone, but capable of being cruel and manipulative when she has to be. Pretty, but pretends not to know it. She hands out compliments like toys to make people like her, and more subtly, because unwarranted compliments throw people off guard, and she probably liked that nervousness, deep down. I get the feeling that she agreed to help Ashley and Sydney because it meant that they would owe her, later; plus she would add to her 'nice' reputation by agreeing. Not to say she's not a nice person, but she has... well-hidden issues.

HARDIN: Is gay. And in serious denial over it, for years and years, because being gay didn't fit with the rest of the serious trustworthy student-council persona he had built for himself. I do think he actually, seriously was attracted to Callo, but eventually that would have fallen apart, and he wouldn't have known why. Looking back, I'm kind of amazed that Sydney didn't take advantage of it earlier. Maybe he was saving it for a rainy day; or maybe Hardin's reaction, way back in seventh grade, scared Sydney. It's not like Hardin was very gentle in the fic; it's not like Sydney deserved gentle either.

ROMEO: Is pretty much every popular guy from my high school, with their unattractive side cranked up. He throws his weight around, because no one's ever seriously tried to stop him. He's large enough that no one can stop him physically, and he's seldom if ever punished for anything, ever, because Texans are fucking WEIRD about high school football, and keeping him in the game would have been of paramount importance. So he's grown up without anyone ever seriously crossing him or thwarting him; when Ashley and Sydney DO (with a yardstick, of all things), it knocks his little train off its rails a bit. After he loses the football game and with it, his chances for a football scholarship (even though he didn't need it), he just goes mad, and takes it out on Ashley because he can. I seriously do not think Romeo was sane, at all, after Saturday evening.

SAMANTHA: Is every perky, cute, easily embarrassed, overtanned, overly made-up cheerleader-type popular girl in my school. Basically, she's like Callo without the ability to cope. Sydney doesn't like Samantha at all, despite their byplay; Sydney acts out in front of Samantha because it embarrasses her, and that amuses him.

ROSENCRANTZ: Is a totally amoral and vicious bastard, who'll do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Duh. He used to just be quiet and mean, but he's also devious, and he discovered that the silly flirtatious sex-machine act attracted low-self-esteem girls like crazy. Rosencrantz will sleep with anything, although he definitely prefers that his prey put up a fight first, because what Rosey wants more than anything else is to WIN. Rosey understands timing, and toying with his prey before he moves in for the kill; unfortunately, he sometimes underestimates people, because he thinks he's pulling the wool over everybody's eyes. He's also on some major drugs; the intimation is that he uses coke, but I was not specific.

DUANE and GRISSOM: Everybody's favorite whipping boys, since they were five, just like Sydney. Sydney, who grew up to be pretty, acts out; Duane and Grissom, who grew up to be awkward, act in. They have no self-esteem at all; fortunately for them, they're too ugly and boring for Rosey to bother with. All they want is to be left alone to their geekish pursuits: running the videotaping and playback of the football games, playing video games, drawing zombies, ogling Callo. Yes, I know that technically Duane is older, but if I wanted them both in the fic, they had to be twins.

TIEGER and NEESA: Yay for the greasers! Yes, Neesa used to be a sweet and relatively normal girl, until about ninth grade; shortly thereafter, she started seeing Tieger. I'm not sure what happened there, but I highly suspect it involved Rosencrantz; they never got any real character development, because Romeo was quite psychotic enough. I just wanted them in there somewhere, because Neesa was my very favorite female VS character.

MR. BARDORBA: Yeah, it's the Duke. No, he's not Sydney's father, despite what happened in the game; I thought about it, I really did, but the school district wouldn't have let Sydney be taught by his own father, and I'm anal about details like that. Or maybe Sydney IS his son and was given away for adoption at birth. Heh.

MS. MULLENKAMP: My drama teacher was male, but Ms. Mullenkamp was based off a different teacher of mine, a woman who was truly excellent at organizing things and getting kids excited about them. Mully's probably the most sympathetic adult in the whole fic, for what little that's worth.

COACH BATISTUM: Yeah, yeah, Cardinal Batistum, master of the Crimson Blades, wow, how clever of me. Ha. Not very bright about teenagers at ALL, the coach.

I'm sure all the football players grew up to be Crimson Blades; I have no idea about Dotty, though. I just made her up. No, she's not me. Quit that.