beer_good_foamy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beer_good_foamy) wrote2013-01-31 10:05 pm
beer_good_foamy) wrote2013-01-31 10:05 pm
Fic: Development Hell, chapter 3
Title: Development Hell
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffyverse, post-"Chosen"
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~2000 (this chapter)
Characters/Pairings: Let's see, there's Buffy, Andrew, Lorne, and a couple of OCs. Various other characters as well as canonical pairings will be alluded to, played with, and lovingly frosted with glucose. Also, any similarities to actual Hollywood actors are entirely coincidental, I swear.
Summary: While killing time in Rome, Buffy runs into a new Slayer with a shocking secret. Now, she's going to have to face her past to keep both herself and those around her from a Fate Worse Than Death... Hollywood.
Previously on Development Hell:
Chapter 1, in which Buffy meets and rescues someone claiming to be Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Chapter 2, in which things are explained
Development Hell
Chapter 3, in which groups get all focusy
Groan.
It was an inward groan, but a groan nonetheless. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the look on the green demon's face when his phone rang for the 48th time that morning was sheer joy, like a thirsty vampire being handed a tall glass of otter. "Julia, how lovely to hear from you," he exclaimed as he hurried down the corridor towards his office, quickly mouthing "aspirin" at his assistant Van. "How's everything on set? Did you get the flowers I - Really? Well, sweetie, that just isn't right. I'll make sure they get you a trailer with a... Olympic size? You got it, honey. I'll give the boys in Gallifreyan Dimensions a ring and have that for you in two shakes of a zero-cal smoothie." He paused to listen, quickly snarf down the aforementioned aspirin, and cringe as he pushed the door shut with his foot. "Oooh, I'm not sure we do that anymore, but I'll check with our legal department. Directors are human too, after all... yes, I'm pretty sure he is. Tell you what, I'll make sure he gets the message without losing anything vital, how's that? Super. Talk to you later. Lots of hugs." He clicked off, sank into his chair and groaned again, this time out loud. He was about to buzz Van on the intercom and ask for something stronger when his assistant beat him to the punch by buzzing him.
"Mister Lorne?" The young intern sounded even more toadyish than usual. "There's someone here to see you."
"That's great, Van, but I could have sworn I asked you to keep my calendar free today."
"I did," Van quickly responded. "They don't have an appointment, but they're, um, very eager to meet you. I asked if they would come back tomorrow, but - Hey! You can't just go in there!"
Lorne's door was kicked open with the sort of flair that comes from many years of practice, and Lorne's heart skipped a beat in his ass. As, to be fair, most demons' hearts would upon facing a clearly upset Vampire Slayer. "Miss Summers," he cried in the same tone he'd used just a few minutes earlier, "how lovely to see you. And you too, MacKenzie. My, you two really do look like peas in a very attractive pod. Please, have a seat."
***
It soon became obvious that there would be layers to Buffy's upsetness. There was the story of how the upcoming movie had become an upcoming movie in the first place...
"Listen, sweetheart, I'm really sorry. It's entirely my fault. I made an offhand comment about 'The Vampire Slayer both men loved, both men lost, oh, I could sell that to any studio in a heartbeat, I see Japp and Orlando...' Harmless, right? Except of course this is Wolfram & Hart, and they used to have some rather... encouraging incentive plans to get employees to anticipate their bosses' wishes. So my very much former assistant, Preston, overheard me and immediately decided to Make It Happen. By the time I found out what he was doing, we'd already signed the contract with the studio, and..." Lorne shrugged.
"I don't get it," Buffy said. "How did this guy Preston even know anything about me?"
Lorne sighed. "Again, my bad. Kind of. I've heard Angel sing - "
"Wait, Angel sings?"
"Trust me, I use the term loosely." Lorne grimaced. "Anyway, I've heard him... do that often enough that I know pretty much everything about him." He held up his hands when Buffy's eyes widened. "Sorry, it's just how empath demons work, I can't help it. For the most part I just file it away somewhere at the back of my noggin, but then a couple of years ago, Wolfram & Hart sent some big brainsucking demon on me and everything about Angel wound up in their archives. Preston simply had Files & Records compile the relevant bits, hired a screenwriter to put it together, and sold it."
"Huh." Buffy took this in. "So they only have my life story up until I graduated high school? How can they make a movie based on that?"
Lorne took a deep breath. "Yeah, about that..."
And that was the next layer. Turned out, former boyfriends believed to have burned up saving the world coming back to life without telling anyone was a bit of a sensitive subject with Buffy. Even more so than the fact that they're prone to getting into loud shouting matches with other former boyfriends, the contents and lurid details of which are overheard by practically half the office.
Buffy got up and paced the room for a minute, fists clenched, and then took a deep breath and sat back down. "Right. I'll deal with him later. So how come you can't stop this? I thought you lawyer people were supposed to be all LA Law-y?"
"Ellaylo...? Oh. Sorry. Right. Well, that's kind of the problem. The movie business have always hired Wolfram & Hart, and apparently they... we proved years and years ago that it's OK to do stuff like this as long as they put a disclaimer in the credits saying that any similarity to persons living, dead or undead is coincidental. It's called the Roger Rabbit Rule."
"Are you saying Roger Rabbit was based on a... Of course it was." Buffy shuddered and moved on. "And there's nothing you can do?"
"I'm afraid not. There's this whole legal mess, and paragraph 493 in Angel's employment contract stating that as a Wolfram & Hart employee he can't sue himself, and blah blah blah. They've invested a ton of money in this being the next big summer hit, and they're not going to back down. If you were the star of the movie we might have some pull, but for a love interest..." He immediately realised he'd started exposing the third layer of Summersian outrage when he saw Buffy's look.
"A what?"
"Sorry, I didn't mean... not that you are, obviously. But... Honey," he turned to MacKenzie, "help me out here."
MacKenzie clearly wasn't entirely comfortable with that suggestion. "What? You got her into this, you tell her."
"Tell me what?" Buffy asked.
Lorne looked pleadingly at MacKenzie. "Please, MacKenzie. She has a code about killing humans, so you're safe."
"Tell me what?" Buffy asked again, her eyes, if possible, narrowing even further.
"Whatever." MacKenzie shrugged and tried to pretend it was nothing big. "It's nothing big, really. It's just, it's, um, the movie isn't really, technically, only about you."
Buffy looked back and forth between them in an attempt to understand. "The movie about me isn't about me?"
"Look, I don't know, OK? I only came in when they started casting. But apparently they did focus groups and stuff and it turned out nobody's interested in female action heroes. So the movie's really about Spike and Angel saving the world while you - I-I mean I figure out which one is more heroic and deserving of your, I mean my undying affection. If it's the perfect sparkling predestined romantic soulmate love you had with Angel..."
"'Predestined'?"
"...Or the hot and heavy self-loathing mutually abusive s&m thing with Spike. Their words, not mine," MacKenzie quickly added. "And I was serious about wanting to get your character right, because people like strong female characters and there's this one scene at the end of the first movie where I get to help Angel stake a vamp."
MacKenzie and Lorne were expecting Buffy to go completely ballistic at this. Instead, she just looked back and forth between them before sighing deeply. She got up and walked over to the window, and stood there with her back towards them looking out over sunny LA.
After a couple of minutes of very tense silence, Lorne made a gesture towards MacKenzie that might have been interpreted as "For the everlasting love of Cecil B Demille, say something." MacKenzie replied with one that might have meant "Me? Why me? I like having full use of my legs." Lorne's following gesture appeared to mean "Please, I'll owe you big time," to which MacKenzie silently replied "OK, whatever, but you better remember that" and gingerly walked over and stood next to Buffy.
"You OK?"
"I'm great," Buffy replied curtly. "I only just discovered that Hollywood is going to use its entire machine to turn me into a princess-and-half-the-kingdom kind of deal. That's going to make our job so much easier."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not writing it, you know? I'd drop out of the movie in a second if I thought it would help, but they'd just replace me and..." MacKenzie sighed and put her hands on the windowsill. "I've been doing this since I was fourteen, right? I'm nineteen now. That's ancient in this business. I basically had to drop out of high school to be on TV and spend every spring wondering if this is the year I get cancelled. And there are hundreds of girls just waiting to take my spot and be the one who's eaten alive by the paparazzi and doesn't even get to eat donuts for the next ten years."
"Huh." Buffy gave her a curious look. "Just to be sure - you're not some kind of mummy, are you?"
"Only according to about every third tabloid story. And they can never agree who the daddy is. Unless I'm a lesbian this week."
Buffy frowned. "What? No, I mean an actual inca mummy."
"Um, not that I know, why?"
"Oh, nothing. Just this thing where I keep running into people whose stories kind of resemble... nevermind." Buffy waved it off. "But is it really that bad? I mean, Donny Japp is doing OK for himself and he's, what..."
"Quite a bit older than me, yeah. But he has kind of an unfair advantage."
Buffy frowned. "Uh... I guess?"
MacKenzie grasped at the final straw. "Look, here's what I might be able to do. What if I take you to see the producers and you can talk to them directly? I'm not sure it'll make any difference, but... You came all this way, you should at least get to see how movies are made."
Buffy shrugged.
MacKenzie nodded hesitantly, then slightly more decisively. "Right. Mr Lorne? Thank you for your help, we'll be leaving now. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight..."
Lorne flinched slightly, silently thanked whichever demon invented autotune, and smiled. "Your singing is coming along beautifully, my dear. I'll let you know when the Sound Of Music remake starts casting."
After they left the office, Lorne finally dared to exhale again. He carefully leaned forward and pressed the intercom. "Uh, Van?"
"Yes, Mister Lorne?"
"I'm going to the bar, be a sweetie and hold all my calls. And if Angel asks if I had any meetings today, tell him... Tell him absolutely not, nuh-uh, none whatsoever. Got it?"
"Sure thing, Mister Lorne."
***
There was no denying that the entrance to the movie studio was impressive. A high wall with a grand old metal gate wide and high enough for a tank (or a stretch limousine) to drive through, a guardhouse with an impeccably dressed and clearly unbribable guard who smiled in exactly the same way every time a sightseeing bus full of tourists passed (which was roughly every thirty seconds), all kept in a state of constant deliberate scruffiness that seemed to say "We've been doing this since your great grandparents went to their first talkie, we know what you like, so just trust us."
The guard took their names, made a short phone call, and let them in.
In a sparsely lit room high above the courtyard, a gloved hand put the old-fashioned phone back on its hook. Two silhouettes, one with very large ears and one with a sharp, pointed profile, looked down at the two young women who walked towards their building.
"So. They're here."
"Yep. Time to bring out the big guns?"
"Of course."
On to chapter 4 and the epilogue
Author: Beer Good (
beer_good_foamy)Fandom: Buffyverse, post-"Chosen"
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~2000 (this chapter)
Characters/Pairings: Let's see, there's Buffy, Andrew, Lorne, and a couple of OCs. Various other characters as well as canonical pairings will be alluded to, played with, and lovingly frosted with glucose. Also, any similarities to actual Hollywood actors are entirely coincidental, I swear.
Summary: While killing time in Rome, Buffy runs into a new Slayer with a shocking secret. Now, she's going to have to face her past to keep both herself and those around her from a Fate Worse Than Death... Hollywood.
Previously on Development Hell:
Chapter 1, in which Buffy meets and rescues someone claiming to be Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Chapter 2, in which things are explained
Development Hell
Chapter 3, in which groups get all focusy
Groan.
It was an inward groan, but a groan nonetheless. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the look on the green demon's face when his phone rang for the 48th time that morning was sheer joy, like a thirsty vampire being handed a tall glass of otter. "Julia, how lovely to hear from you," he exclaimed as he hurried down the corridor towards his office, quickly mouthing "aspirin" at his assistant Van. "How's everything on set? Did you get the flowers I - Really? Well, sweetie, that just isn't right. I'll make sure they get you a trailer with a... Olympic size? You got it, honey. I'll give the boys in Gallifreyan Dimensions a ring and have that for you in two shakes of a zero-cal smoothie." He paused to listen, quickly snarf down the aforementioned aspirin, and cringe as he pushed the door shut with his foot. "Oooh, I'm not sure we do that anymore, but I'll check with our legal department. Directors are human too, after all... yes, I'm pretty sure he is. Tell you what, I'll make sure he gets the message without losing anything vital, how's that? Super. Talk to you later. Lots of hugs." He clicked off, sank into his chair and groaned again, this time out loud. He was about to buzz Van on the intercom and ask for something stronger when his assistant beat him to the punch by buzzing him.
"Mister Lorne?" The young intern sounded even more toadyish than usual. "There's someone here to see you."
"That's great, Van, but I could have sworn I asked you to keep my calendar free today."
"I did," Van quickly responded. "They don't have an appointment, but they're, um, very eager to meet you. I asked if they would come back tomorrow, but - Hey! You can't just go in there!"
Lorne's door was kicked open with the sort of flair that comes from many years of practice, and Lorne's heart skipped a beat in his ass. As, to be fair, most demons' hearts would upon facing a clearly upset Vampire Slayer. "Miss Summers," he cried in the same tone he'd used just a few minutes earlier, "how lovely to see you. And you too, MacKenzie. My, you two really do look like peas in a very attractive pod. Please, have a seat."
It soon became obvious that there would be layers to Buffy's upsetness. There was the story of how the upcoming movie had become an upcoming movie in the first place...
"Listen, sweetheart, I'm really sorry. It's entirely my fault. I made an offhand comment about 'The Vampire Slayer both men loved, both men lost, oh, I could sell that to any studio in a heartbeat, I see Japp and Orlando...' Harmless, right? Except of course this is Wolfram & Hart, and they used to have some rather... encouraging incentive plans to get employees to anticipate their bosses' wishes. So my very much former assistant, Preston, overheard me and immediately decided to Make It Happen. By the time I found out what he was doing, we'd already signed the contract with the studio, and..." Lorne shrugged.
"I don't get it," Buffy said. "How did this guy Preston even know anything about me?"
Lorne sighed. "Again, my bad. Kind of. I've heard Angel sing - "
"Wait, Angel sings?"
"Trust me, I use the term loosely." Lorne grimaced. "Anyway, I've heard him... do that often enough that I know pretty much everything about him." He held up his hands when Buffy's eyes widened. "Sorry, it's just how empath demons work, I can't help it. For the most part I just file it away somewhere at the back of my noggin, but then a couple of years ago, Wolfram & Hart sent some big brainsucking demon on me and everything about Angel wound up in their archives. Preston simply had Files & Records compile the relevant bits, hired a screenwriter to put it together, and sold it."
"Huh." Buffy took this in. "So they only have my life story up until I graduated high school? How can they make a movie based on that?"
Lorne took a deep breath. "Yeah, about that..."
And that was the next layer. Turned out, former boyfriends believed to have burned up saving the world coming back to life without telling anyone was a bit of a sensitive subject with Buffy. Even more so than the fact that they're prone to getting into loud shouting matches with other former boyfriends, the contents and lurid details of which are overheard by practically half the office.
Buffy got up and paced the room for a minute, fists clenched, and then took a deep breath and sat back down. "Right. I'll deal with him later. So how come you can't stop this? I thought you lawyer people were supposed to be all LA Law-y?"
"Ellaylo...? Oh. Sorry. Right. Well, that's kind of the problem. The movie business have always hired Wolfram & Hart, and apparently they... we proved years and years ago that it's OK to do stuff like this as long as they put a disclaimer in the credits saying that any similarity to persons living, dead or undead is coincidental. It's called the Roger Rabbit Rule."
"Are you saying Roger Rabbit was based on a... Of course it was." Buffy shuddered and moved on. "And there's nothing you can do?"
"I'm afraid not. There's this whole legal mess, and paragraph 493 in Angel's employment contract stating that as a Wolfram & Hart employee he can't sue himself, and blah blah blah. They've invested a ton of money in this being the next big summer hit, and they're not going to back down. If you were the star of the movie we might have some pull, but for a love interest..." He immediately realised he'd started exposing the third layer of Summersian outrage when he saw Buffy's look.
"A what?"
"Sorry, I didn't mean... not that you are, obviously. But... Honey," he turned to MacKenzie, "help me out here."
MacKenzie clearly wasn't entirely comfortable with that suggestion. "What? You got her into this, you tell her."
"Tell me what?" Buffy asked.
Lorne looked pleadingly at MacKenzie. "Please, MacKenzie. She has a code about killing humans, so you're safe."
"Tell me what?" Buffy asked again, her eyes, if possible, narrowing even further.
"Whatever." MacKenzie shrugged and tried to pretend it was nothing big. "It's nothing big, really. It's just, it's, um, the movie isn't really, technically, only about you."
Buffy looked back and forth between them in an attempt to understand. "The movie about me isn't about me?"
"Look, I don't know, OK? I only came in when they started casting. But apparently they did focus groups and stuff and it turned out nobody's interested in female action heroes. So the movie's really about Spike and Angel saving the world while you - I-I mean I figure out which one is more heroic and deserving of your, I mean my undying affection. If it's the perfect sparkling predestined romantic soulmate love you had with Angel..."
"'Predestined'?"
"...Or the hot and heavy self-loathing mutually abusive s&m thing with Spike. Their words, not mine," MacKenzie quickly added. "And I was serious about wanting to get your character right, because people like strong female characters and there's this one scene at the end of the first movie where I get to help Angel stake a vamp."
MacKenzie and Lorne were expecting Buffy to go completely ballistic at this. Instead, she just looked back and forth between them before sighing deeply. She got up and walked over to the window, and stood there with her back towards them looking out over sunny LA.
After a couple of minutes of very tense silence, Lorne made a gesture towards MacKenzie that might have been interpreted as "For the everlasting love of Cecil B Demille, say something." MacKenzie replied with one that might have meant "Me? Why me? I like having full use of my legs." Lorne's following gesture appeared to mean "Please, I'll owe you big time," to which MacKenzie silently replied "OK, whatever, but you better remember that" and gingerly walked over and stood next to Buffy.
"You OK?"
"I'm great," Buffy replied curtly. "I only just discovered that Hollywood is going to use its entire machine to turn me into a princess-and-half-the-kingdom kind of deal. That's going to make our job so much easier."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not writing it, you know? I'd drop out of the movie in a second if I thought it would help, but they'd just replace me and..." MacKenzie sighed and put her hands on the windowsill. "I've been doing this since I was fourteen, right? I'm nineteen now. That's ancient in this business. I basically had to drop out of high school to be on TV and spend every spring wondering if this is the year I get cancelled. And there are hundreds of girls just waiting to take my spot and be the one who's eaten alive by the paparazzi and doesn't even get to eat donuts for the next ten years."
"Huh." Buffy gave her a curious look. "Just to be sure - you're not some kind of mummy, are you?"
"Only according to about every third tabloid story. And they can never agree who the daddy is. Unless I'm a lesbian this week."
Buffy frowned. "What? No, I mean an actual inca mummy."
"Um, not that I know, why?"
"Oh, nothing. Just this thing where I keep running into people whose stories kind of resemble... nevermind." Buffy waved it off. "But is it really that bad? I mean, Donny Japp is doing OK for himself and he's, what..."
"Quite a bit older than me, yeah. But he has kind of an unfair advantage."
Buffy frowned. "Uh... I guess?"
MacKenzie grasped at the final straw. "Look, here's what I might be able to do. What if I take you to see the producers and you can talk to them directly? I'm not sure it'll make any difference, but... You came all this way, you should at least get to see how movies are made."
Buffy shrugged.
MacKenzie nodded hesitantly, then slightly more decisively. "Right. Mr Lorne? Thank you for your help, we'll be leaving now. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight..."
Lorne flinched slightly, silently thanked whichever demon invented autotune, and smiled. "Your singing is coming along beautifully, my dear. I'll let you know when the Sound Of Music remake starts casting."
After they left the office, Lorne finally dared to exhale again. He carefully leaned forward and pressed the intercom. "Uh, Van?"
"Yes, Mister Lorne?"
"I'm going to the bar, be a sweetie and hold all my calls. And if Angel asks if I had any meetings today, tell him... Tell him absolutely not, nuh-uh, none whatsoever. Got it?"
"Sure thing, Mister Lorne."
There was no denying that the entrance to the movie studio was impressive. A high wall with a grand old metal gate wide and high enough for a tank (or a stretch limousine) to drive through, a guardhouse with an impeccably dressed and clearly unbribable guard who smiled in exactly the same way every time a sightseeing bus full of tourists passed (which was roughly every thirty seconds), all kept in a state of constant deliberate scruffiness that seemed to say "We've been doing this since your great grandparents went to their first talkie, we know what you like, so just trust us."
The guard took their names, made a short phone call, and let them in.
In a sparsely lit room high above the courtyard, a gloved hand put the old-fashioned phone back on its hook. Two silhouettes, one with very large ears and one with a sharp, pointed profile, looked down at the two young women who walked towards their building.
"So. They're here."
"Yep. Time to bring out the big guns?"
"Of course."
On to chapter 4 and the epilogue
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So the movie's really about Spike and Angel saving the world while you - I-I mean I figure out which one is more heroic and deserving of your, I mean my undying affection.
And I was serious about wanting to get your character right, because people like strong female characters and there's this one scene at the end of the first movie where I get to help Angel stake a vamp.
But he has kind of an unfair advantage.
Apparently Mackenzie is the most quotable this chapter. ;-)
Love the call back to Files & Records, the allusions to Olympic-sized Gallifreyan pools, and no donuts. Hollywood Hell, indeed.
And now things take a turn for the...mysterious! Ruh roh. Will Buffy prevail? Stay tuned!
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And I feel honestly bad that I've never written more Files & Records than I have. Truly, truly awesome character.
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I am loving this - and it fits beautifully just at an angle to canon. And there's Lorne!
Awesomeness!
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Thanks! I'd forgotten how much fun Lorne can be.
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And it has Gallifreyan swimming pools, and most importantly Lorne! I've missed him!
Looking forward to seeing where you take this next!
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And there should always be more Lorne.
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HELL TO THE YES.
I thought Buffy's reaction to being relegated to love-interest was surprisingly calm - I think MacKenzie and Lorne have no idea how really lucky they are. I was expecting them to be in for the tongue-lashing to end all tongue-lashings. Later, perhaps? I'm guessing that being told this is one thing but watching it unfold on-set will be quite another. (Sort of the way one of my stepfathers, an undercover cop, used to BITCH about all the "inaccuracies" in NYPD Blues. Which never stopped him from watching it every week.) So bring it on, Miss Summers.
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Thanks! I think Buffy's less calm and more... part frustrated and part depressed. Weight of the world thing. If it was just Angel or Spike behind it, that's one thing, but if it's the entire Hollywood machine...? Well, we'll see in the next chapter. :)
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Makes sense. *hugs Buffy* I can't wait until she gets her groove back, though.
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:ponders:
Anyway, whoever they are (Bugs Bunny? Mickey Mouse?), I'm sure they're extremely evil.
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