Still love this. I like Anita's maladjustedness, and Dawn's maladjusted response to it, and Micah's wanting to thwap them both (well, not like really, but you know what I mean.)
It's occurring to me, as I read this, that canon-Dawn had some very childish speach patterns and ways of interacting with others. She sounds and acts like her canon self here. And she sounds and acts like a slightly precocious five-year-old. Sometime between season 1 when Buffy was 15, and season 5 when Dawn was 14, Joss had a serious disconnect with the world of teenagerhood, I think. He really wrote her a lot younger, psychogically, than she was. Not to pick on her or anything 'cause hey, I love Dawn, and there are even plausible canon explanations (severe childhood trauma re: Buffy, parents' divorce, etc., actual physical age being approximately 6 months . . ), but she just doesn't sound or act 15. She might be a young-ish but close-to-normal 12, but she's a there's-something-wrong-here 15.
. . which makes me ponder that this situation you've written, her having a second childhood, might actually be good for her in a warped sort of way.
(Wasn't Buffy 14 when she was Called? Hrmm. I wonder if Dawn's subconsciously - in canon, this is, not so much here - trying to maintain childishness, because her nearest example of what it means to grow up was so severely fucked up.)
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It's occurring to me, as I read this, that canon-Dawn had some very childish speach patterns and ways of interacting with others. She sounds and acts like her canon self here. And she sounds and acts like a slightly precocious five-year-old. Sometime between season 1 when Buffy was 15, and season 5 when Dawn was 14, Joss had a serious disconnect with the world of teenagerhood, I think. He really wrote her a lot younger, psychogically, than she was. Not to pick on her or anything 'cause hey, I love Dawn, and there are even plausible canon explanations (severe childhood trauma re: Buffy, parents' divorce, etc., actual physical age being approximately 6 months . . ), but she just doesn't sound or act 15. She might be a young-ish but close-to-normal 12, but she's a there's-something-wrong-here 15.
. . which makes me ponder that this situation you've written, her having a second childhood, might actually be good for her in a warped sort of way.
(Wasn't Buffy 14 when she was Called? Hrmm. I wonder if Dawn's subconsciously - in canon, this is, not so much here - trying to maintain childishness, because her nearest example of what it means to grow up was so severely fucked up.)
-Sonya