Fic - Stepchild of Belief

Title - Stepchild of Belief

Disclaimer - they belong to Joss Whedon not me

Rating - PG-13

Pairing - Spike/Dawn, implied Buffy/Angel

Time line Post series (AR, no comics canon)

Summary - The team gets called to rural West Virginia to investigate a bizarre string of deaths

Author’s Note 1 - Thanks to evil_little_dog for the beta. This was written for the Happy Endings ficathon. Challenge parameters are at the end.

Author’s Note 2 – I’m not exactly sure when I wrote this as it seems to be published at none of my usual spots. However, judging by the subject matter, I’m going to say it was around 2006-2008. The Mothman Festival is a real thing but it no longer uses the amphitheater for the talks described here and the Bennigan’s is long gone. But in the time frame I just mentioned this is how the festival was and yes I’ve retconned this a tiny bit. Also it’s AR, ignoring the comic canon because at the time I hadn’t read them (and still haven’t as far as the Buffy comics are concerned).

XXX

( Stepchild of Belief )

Bang Your Head

Mental health will drive you mad....well at least health insurance will. Most of the Flist knows that I've been battling United Health care for almost 3 years now over the fact that they're paying on ANOTHER person with my exact name and birthdate (but different SS#) in Texas. To compound matters, my employer is in Rio Grande but it's pronounced Rye-O Grand but it LOOKS like I SHOULD be in Texas.

It's not that I give two shits these morons have paid out 20-40K a year for this other person. Hell she helps me meet my deductible BUT it goes against my university and raises our collective costs so I've been trying to stop it and in the last two weeks I've been getting a crap ton of denial of payment statements for the other Dana. So I finally have time to call them and ask 'does this mean that you're finally denying her care?'

TWO HOURS. It took another TWO HOURS (which is usual for them, once it took 4) to make them even understand what the fuck I wanted. 'Are you sure you're not in Texas?' Yep, pretty fucking sure I'm not a Texan. I've been in Texas exactly once for a week. He finally believes me about this (with me continually saying LOOK AT THE NOTES. I call every few months and I KNOW there are notes). So he finally believes me that I'm the actual paying customer and I don't live in Texas.

We then start in on 'well we can't stop you from getting those statements.' I DONT WANT TO STOP THEM. At least then I know what doctors are billing my fucking insurance so I can call them and tell them they had better look up that Dana's SS# and if they don't stop billing me I'm reporting them for violating HIPPA because I can see all that Dana's issues. It's a HUGE HIPPA breach (which I also kept explaining to this guy).

FINALLY he gets what I want. TO know if they're blocking her charges and yes they are. Huzzah but there were TWENTY charges to my insurance and only one was mine.

Bangs head. So this put me way behind. I didn't even get lunch til nearly 3 which threw off my sugars, exhausting me. I'm still recovering but it also means very little got done today. About the only things I accomplished was to get some cookie making stuff, holiday cards sent out and the gifts wrapped (and boxes pulled out of the recycler to mail things)

I'm going to get started on my Yule fic. So again if you want something from me, let me know.



( fanfic meme )

Do you think your style has changed over time? How so? Oh lord yes! I'm a much better writer now of course but there are some things that aren't improved. I used to describe things a lot more. That was the biggest change in my style. I know why it happened. I belonged to a toxic writers group in the 90s and I spent about 2 years being mocked for describing. You'd think 20 years later I'd be over it but obviously not. I hate that far too much of my stuff ends up either being about eyes or smiling. It takes forever to weed that shit out.

My style has led me away from writing women and I find that horrifying. I think that's part of the reason for getting back into fanfic a little since both Buffy verse and Fullmetal Alchemist, while I still write men I DO write the strong women there too. I NEED to get that back. It's killed me on two of the three last nanos (every other one is not by my m/m writing pen name). I couldn't get the women to do any damn thing.