Um, my family is quite the scavangers. If it's left by the side of the road and looks to be in good condition it's considered fair game. We have no shame in lugging things home and proudly telling people about it later.

We scavenge and then refurbish. It's fun.

Hubby and I gague the current economy by what the students are willing to leave behind when they leave in the spring. Pickings have been very lean the last few years. One year quite a while ago there was a snowmobile in the trash. And a Mac computer which someone deliberately put a pipe through. Could be they didn't work, but somehow I think there was a bit of "Daddy's buying me new stuff" involved. Especially when you'd see entire wardrobes in the trash.

I found very expensive, never worn shoes and jeans by the dumpster once.

I have a step cousin who lives near the university, he and his friends furnished their place entirely with castoffs. Furniture, lamps, tvs, computers, stereos, everything.

double post

P.M. Marcontell -- I hope I am not part of the reason why you feel like you should keep your mouth shut! I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable by joining the discussion, and I am sorry if I did.

Her Wes reads a little off (which may be my Uninvited Guest issue in a nutshell), however a large part of that is the fact that I'm a primarily Wescentric writer, so many, many Wesleys feel off to me. I'm hypercritical about the characters in which I'm most invested. (Wesley, Buffy, and, oddly, Fred, even though I don't write much Fred.)

It's true, the characters we feel most invested in as writers are often the hardest to accept someone else's vision of! I like most of the Wes in TUG (I love the Watchers, and not just because she made one of them a deconstructionist), but not the very end, because it's not something the Wesley I've written myself would want to do. Sometimes, you get a hold of a character in your head, and either other people's view of the character work with it or they don't. Then, there's the converse -- I have been writing a Smallville story for several months now that I have been having trouble with because it has to be told from Clark's point of view, and I found that, among other things, I really had a hard time writing Clark. I *don't* have him in my head the way I have Lex, or Wesley (theme much?), and so it took some doing to understand even my own version of him.

I do think Yahtzee is someone who has malleable characters - she's written a couple of different Buffys, for instance. I wonder if that's part of what PMM's noticing.

(Note that I do not think this is a bad thing, at all - I don't think she's ever written a Buffy that I disbelieved, and she's hard to do right and do right by.)

And the evil Farscape fans (whom I love) have now planted Giles meets Aeryn in my head and it won't go away! There is no sex but I think extensive intellectual warfare might work.

No no no, see, PMM's going to write Crichton/Wesley. Which I realize is kind of an uphill battle, but c'mon, Plei! You'll love it. It'll be fun! Just because it's a crossover with a fandom you're not in...

Mme Lizard? Insent.

Thanks, darling. I'll be full of the slashy Christmas cheer, or something.