Writing Resources - Nerd No More When Dawn was first introduced (and that teeny teaser at the end of Buffy versus Dracula doesn't count), she was a chess-playing, school-enjoying, compulsive-diarist who was in a book club with her mother. Spin forward a year and she's now a dark magic-dabbling, school-skipping, compulsive-thief who parks with vampires she barely knows. Dawn's identity crisis and subsequent teenage rebellion are often the main motivation for her actions, so it's important to decide how far into her slide into delinquency you are going to set your fic. Early Dawn is jealous of Buffy's superpowers. Knowing she can't compete with that, she goes out of her way to outshine Buffy in other areas, mocking Buffy's lack of literary knowledge ("Crack a book sometime") and using her position as the baby of the family to compete for their mother's affection. When Buffy was in her mid-teens, she was burning down school buildings and dating bad-boys and vampires. Dawn was the complete opposite: a perfect student who had a crush on nice-guy, Xander. Later, when Dawn finds out that she too has supernatural origins, not only does she lose her sense of self, but her place in the family. She is no longer the 'normal' daughter who doesn't cause trouble. She's the cuckoo in the nest who has inadvertantly sicced a hellgod on the family. She can't go on with her life the way she used to, so she decides to out-Buffy, Buffy. She cuts her arms with a kitchen knife, she steals things, burns all her diaries and anything else lying around her room which reminds her of her old self. She tries to run away from home and she develops a crush on bad-guy, Spike and asks him to tell her stories about his gory glory days. After her mother's death, Dawn's downward spiral speeds up. Tara mentions that people do weird things after they lose a loved one and although she was talking about Buffy, the comment applies equally to Dawn. Her kleptomania gets worse, she starts skipping school and experimenting with the dark arts. She lets herself be peer-pressured into acts of vandalism and more extreme thefts. She seems to consider for a moment, letting herself be turned into a vampire. Dawn is not a natural born rebel, though. This behaviour does not come automatically and she is secretly sad that nobody seems to have noticed the full extent of her delinquent acts. Her solo on this subject in the musical episode was very symbolically stifled just a couple of lines in. Dawn's thefts are a cry for help and until somebody notices and helps her to work through her issues, she's not going to be herself again. This essay was kindly donated by The Walking Happy Meal of Summers Sun. [archive] [resources] ['shipper] [media] [updates] [site info] [links] [main]